


Oneirataxia

by chiller



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Death, Gore, Horror, Light Romance, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-05-16 16:42:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14815047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiller/pseuds/chiller
Summary: Oneirataxia - The inability to differentiate between fantasy and reality.When a mysterious unidentified game falls into Arin's hands, he and Dan are thrown into the reality of a survival horror and must work together to escape with their lives.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, I'm here with my first big multi-chapter fic for any fandom! I've spent a long time working on this one. I've already written most of it and I plan on updating weekly. 
> 
> Please note the tags, as there will be graphic content. It's a survival horror, after all. 
> 
> I hope you all enjoy!

“You’re sure this is the real deal?” Danny held a small brown package in his hands, thumbing over the strips of tape that hold the cardboard shut. He sat sprawled on the couch, leisurely looking over the item. 

Just minutes before, Arin had yelled in excitement and proceeded to rush into the recording room, shoving the box in Dan’s hands while he went to rummage around for something in the cabinets. He interrupted their previously set recording schedule for something he deemed was cooler.

“Well, yeah. The seller had pictures and everything. A bunch of people were bidding,” Arin answered as he fumbled on the shelf behind the Grump couch, searching fruitlessly for scissors to open the box. “Seemed legit. Nintendo confirmed they were real.”

A week prior, a few special and rare editions of an old Zelda game had been found and released to the public, only playable on one Nintendo console: the SNES. Originally released in 1991, the game was short and sweet but incredibly hard to find. There were only about 150 copies made and available for sale. The reason for the game’s limited amount was uncertain, but now that they were open to the public, Zelda enthusiasts everywhere were clashing to get their hands on a copy. 

Arin, of course, swooped into an auction and purchased one for himself, disregarding the high price because of the significance of the game. _It’ll be perfect for Grumps,_ he had said enthusiastically. _This way, everyone who couldn't find one can have the experience too._

Dan didn't argue; the look of triumph on Arin’s face when he won the auction was worth the doubt. 

And now here they were, in the recording room, set up and ready to begin their latest series. 

“Aha! Found them.” Arin returned to Dan’s side with a pair of scissors in hand. He snipped the air as he took a seat on the couch. “Gimme.” 

Dan obliged, passing the thoroughly inspected box to Arin. The younger man took it gently in one hand, and started to cut the tape with the other. 

“Shouldn't we have done an unboxing video? You know, since this is kind of a big deal?” Dan asked as he watched his friend work over the box. In three easy slices of the scissors, it was open and the cardboard flaps were pulled up.

“Nah dude, I’m too fucking excited for that,” Arin replied as he reached into the box and pulled the game case out. The cartridge was inside another protective box, one that the game came with. Arin looked at the front of it and Dan watched as his friend’s eyes widened. 

The game’s box was black, with a tall dark gray castle on the cover. In cheesy, spooky red letters that dripped like blood, the title read _Immured._

It definitely wasn't the promised Zelda game. 

“What the fuck is this?” 

Dan’s sudden burst of laughter almost drowned out Arin’s growls of frustration. “What the hell?” He leaned back on the couch, limbs flung all over the place as his chest heaved in laughter. Arin went silent, staring at the game in disbelief. 

“Dan, it’s not funny,” Arin whined unconvincingly, flipping the box over to read the back. He looked it over as Dan regained his composure. After a few more hiccups of amusement, Dan leaned over to his friend to get a glimpse of the writing on the box. He didn’t want to say he was right, but he knew Arin’s decision to purchase the game on an online auction was sketchy for such a rare copy. It was a lot of money to spend blindly online.

“It’s 1975. You are on a camping trip in Scotland with your friends, when a mysterious and deranged killer abducts you. Waking up in a dark, crumbling castle, you must find a way to escape while avoiding dangerous and frightful traps set by the malicious Doctor. From an eerie supernatural element, to the horrors of human nature, _Immured_ is sure to provide a challenging and exciting game experience. Blah blah blah,” Arin reads, shaking his head in disbelief. “Wow. Sounds like a winner.” 

Dan moved away, running a hand through his hair nervously and laughing again. “I’m actually kind of freaked out. What are you gonna do?” 

Arin finally met his friend’s eyes. “It’s not even scary, it’s an old game. It’s probably like Super Mario, just a 2D run and jump platform. The least I can do, now that I spent actual money on this, is play it on the show and get a few laughs, right?” 

“Alright, sure. You wanna call the person you bought it from?” Dan asked. “Maybe you can file a report and get your money back, since you were probably scammed. I don't think he mistakenly sent you...whatever this is. I can look this game up and see what it’s about while you do try to get in touch with him?”

“Okay, deal. I can’t believe this. I should have known.” Arin’s voice was low and Dan could tell he really was a bit disheartened. He had been so excited, and now his money had gone to waste. In his enthusiasm and haste he hadn't stopped to listen to reason. 

“I know. I’m sorry, this is such a bummer.” Dan tried to console him. 

“Tell me about it. This is fucking weird.” Arin set the game on the floor and pulled out his phone to check for any records of the purchase. Dan’s eyes lingered on his friend for another moment before he took his phone from his pocket as well. The two of them faded into silence as they set off on their own tasks. 

About ten minutes passed in near dead silence, aside from the clicks of typing on a phone and their subtle movements on the couch. There was a strange tension in the air, like the presence of the unexplained game had made them uneasy. 

“So, uh, bad news,” Arin spoke up first, glancing over at Danny. “The seller deleted their account. Our messages are gone, the details of our transaction are gone. They absolutely planned this. Fuck!” 

“Shit, dude. You don’t have any of the records? Why would they do that?” Dan asked gently, in an effort to comfort his friend. He felt a wave of sympathy for Arin, having been tricked a few times himself by suspicious sellers online. 

“No, nothing,” Arin began, but a look of realization hit his face and he paused. “Wait. I should have my receipt email.” He tapped on his phone, pulling up his email account that was overflowing with messages. Dan waited patiently. 

“Okay, so, I see my email from the website. I'm going to take some pictures and send them a report. But we should get to recording first; I can do this tonight, and we have to get some videos up… Even if they aren’t part of the original plan.”

“Are you sure you want to hold off on something like that?” Dan raised an eyebrow in uncertainty. “If you wanna take care of this now, it’s totally fine.” 

“Yeah, I can deal with it later. We are supposed to have plenty of new content by today. And now I just want to play this dumb game and take my mind off the whole thing.” Arin sighed before picking the game off the floor and tossing his phone to the side, to be lost somewhere in the couch. “What did you find on it?” he asked as an afterthought. 

“Oh, right.” Dan’s eyes dropped back down to his own phone, which had gone dark. He opened it again, tapping his password, before the screen lit up on the page he had been browsing. An amused chuckle fell from his lips as he remembered what he had been reading. “I couldn’t really find anything. There’s _nothing_. Weird, right?” Dan started. 

“Yeah? Well that’ll make it more fun, I guess,” Arin replied numbly as he loaded the cartridge into the game console. He must not have been listening much, because something like that would have normally raised his suspicions. He fumbled with the recording screen a bit. 

“But there is one lonely comment I found, on an old game site. It’s retro as fuck. There’s just one thread, with no replies, posted in 2012,” Danny added with a hint of mystery to his voice. “It says, ‘If you die in the game do you die in real life?’” He couldn’t contain his giggling, sparing a glance to Arin to see if his friend was amused at all. 

Indeed, this pulled a laugh from Arin and he shook his head in disbelief. “Oh my fucking god.” He picked the controller up and leaned back comfortably into the couch. “Let’s just get this show on the road. I’m gonna get it loaded up before I start the episode.” 

“Sure.” 

The dark television flickered to life as the title screen appeared. A pixelated animation ran across the screen. There was no mention of company names, producers, or sponsors as the game loaded. No logos to be seen. Much like Arin had assumed, the game appeared to be a run and jump style, or at least a RPG. The animation depicted a few characters in different outfits, darting back and forth to avoid a cloud of black that chased them. The title, _Immured_ , spun on screen and dripped with blood. There was only one option to select: “play…”. It was silly at best. 

“Oh, so I don’t get any instructions? No settings?” Arin grumbled, still bitter about the whole ordeal.

“It’s old. And it’s not like you read them anyway,” Danny replied with a small grin, studying a strand of his hair as he waited for the game to load completely. There was a faint, chilling sound coming from the speakers that could only be the background music. 

“Can we just take a moment to appreciate this? Me and my good pal Dan, about to play an ancient horror game with no traces on the internet. It’s probably broken or completely unfinished. I can’t wait,” Arin said. Dan answered with an affectionate burst of laughter. 

“Okay, okay. Welcome back to Game Grumps,” Dan announced, signalling the start of the episode. 

Arin chimed in, “So, uh. We’re playing this random fucking game. We were supposed to be playing something else, but we had… a few minor issues. It’s quite the story. I haven't even tested out this game yet. I don’t know what it is.” 

“We’ll explain, I promise! But in the meantime, please enjoy _‘Immured’_ ,” Dan finished cheerfully. “Arin is being very grumpy right now. ” 

“I am not,” was the sass-filled retort. “I’m just skeptical about this shitty game. We have no idea what we’re getting into. And based on what we found online, none of you should know either. This is a completely obscure game. So prepare your assholes, cause it might get scary up in here.”

“My ass is not ready,” Dan snorted. 

Arin rolled his eyes and laughed as he pressed the ‘play’ button.

Nothing happened. 

Confused, Dan glanced over to the recording timer. It was not counting. He opened his mouth to say something, but his jaw felt stuck, like he couldn’t move. He turned his gaze to Arin but his friend was still, motionless, his mouth half open. Frozen. 

Before Dan had any more time to process this, his vision began to white out as a scorching light seared the edges of his vision, quickly obscuring everything. 

Then nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

When Dan opened his eyes, he was greeted by darkness in an unfamiliar room. His body ached with a deep soreness like he had been thrown around in a car wreck, and tingles ran up and down his skin. He groaned quietly in confusion and pain. 

“Arin?” The word was slurred but unmistakably his friend’s name. There was no answer. In fact, there was little to no sound at all.

When Dan’s body felt mobile enough to begin an experimental search of his surroundings, he stuck an arm out of the warm cocoon he was in. He groped blindly in the dark, knocking something over and touching mysterious, unknown objects. Finally he felt the recognizable shape of a lantern, like one to take camping. His fingers found the switch and he turned it on. Light filled the room. 

Which, turns out, wasn’t actually a room. Dan sat up as he looked around, propping himself on his elbows. He was in a tent, but it was made from a beige cloth or fabric instead of mesh. White ropes were draped here and there, tying the tent to its stakes. Next to Dan was the lantern he had switched on, a flashlight, a backpack, and some other unidentifiable object. It was a smooth gray pouch, filled with green and gooey gel. Dan was too baffled to devote his attention to one single object. 

His wandering eyes dropped to his own body, which was tucked safely into a forest green sleeping bag. He was also covered in a thick flannel blanket. Dan kicked it off him and scrambled out of the sleeping bag as panic sunk in. 

“What the fuck, what the fuck,” he breathed, hunched over on all fours as his brain whirled in overdrive. Where was he? Dan could remember sitting next to Arin in the Grump Room, recording, but everything else was hazy. How did he get here? 

“Arin?” Dan called again, louder this time, finally gaining the ability to climb to his feet. He tried a few more names when he was met with silence, but no one answered him. Hastily, he snatched the flashlight from the floor of the tent and opened the flaps to exit. 

Outside it was pitch black, the darkness of night concealing any clues to his location. Danny was suddenly made aware of his lack of clothing when the icy air slammed into his bare skin, raising goosebumps. He was only wearing black sweatpants that clung to his frame. 

Shaking immediately from the chill, it took Dan quite a few moments to turn the flashlight on with his trembling hands. When the light flicked on, a figure stood right in front of him, illuminated in the flashlight’s beam. 

“FUCK!” Dan shrieked and stumbled backwards in surprise, arms flailing. He nearly collided with his tent and barely caught his balance before he went tumbling on the ground. 

“Dan, it’s me,” said the hesitant and nervous voice of Arin. “Are you okay? I heard you calling.” 

Dan exhaled a large breath and a shaken laugh fell from his lips. “Fuck dude, you scared the shit out of me. I’m okay. Just really confused. What’s going on?” He could angle the flashlight at Arin’s body so he could see his friend without blinding him. Arin was in sweatpants, like Dan, but he also had a coat.

“I don’t know. I have no idea where we are, how we got here. I can’t help but think this is some kind of joke, but I couldn’t even see Ross going this far. I mean, we’re in the middle of the fucking woods. Have you looked around?” 

“No,” Dan answered meekly. He pointed the flashlight around and felt anxiety drop in his stomach like a stone. They were indeed in the middle of a forest, bark and leaves reflecting in the beam of light. Endless rows of trees and plants, fading away into darkness. Every direction Dan spun, he was met with the same image. Thick trees. Not a trace of humanity besides the neatly built tents that Dan and Arin had woken up in. 

“Oh my god. Did you wake up, just now, in that tent?” Dan asked. 

Arin nodded. “A few minutes ago. I just had a few things with me. A lantern, backpack, some other weird shit.” 

“Oh, fuck. What’s the last thing you remember?” There was increasing hysteria in Dan’s voice and he curled up on himself in an attempt to shield his skin from the cold. He couldn't understand what was going on. 

“We were in the recording room,” Arin answered, reaching up to scratch the scruff of his beard. “That’s all I remember. You?” 

“Same thing,” Dan murmured. “You don’t think this is a joke, right?” 

“Well, how could it not be? You don’t just end up in the middle of the woods at night.” Arin’s tone was defensive, but only for a moment. “Hey- you’re cold, why don’t we sit in your tent instead of freezing out here?” He stepped forward, outstretching an arm to guide Dan back into the tent. Dan complied. 

They sat down in silence on the floor of the tent and Dan pulled the blanket from his sleeping bag over his shoulders. He felt the chill slowly melt away. 

“Okay, let’s review,” Arin started, when Dan had stopped shivering. “We don’t know where we are, or how we got here, and it seems like we’re alone. We can’t remember anything leading up to this moment, besides being in the recording room. What were we playing?” 

That last specific phrase made Dan shudder, as if his body knew something he didn’t. His face tightened as he tried to remember. “I don’t know. What does it matter?” he said weakly. A sense of dread was starting to build inside him. There was something very wrong going on here. “Arin, what are we going to do? Did you have your phone on you? I couldn’t find mine.” 

“No phone. I don’t know either.” Arin was starting to sound just as defeated. The two of them sat there, staring at each other in the dim light, as they desperately tried to make sense of their circumstances. The real fear hadn’t completely set in yet, instead shrouded by confusion. 

“We can’t just walk anywhere right now. It’s too dangerous, too cold. We don't know how long it would take to find civilization. So should we wait till morning to do anything?” Dan asked. 

“Yeah... That sounds like the right plan. You don't have proper clothes anyway, and I'm not going out there alone.” Arin sighed. “What the fuck is even going on?” 

Dan had no answer, so the conversation ended there. They sat in stunned silence, as if this was a dream they could just wait out. The numbing frosty air kept them from getting too ambitious and venturing out to explore. 

An excessive amount of time passed, with no sounds but the faint whirring wind that had picked up outside and the rustling of branches. Arin had fallen into a shallow slumber, rested on his side across from Dan. 

Too baffled to simply fall asleep, Danny had sat with his head in his hands, counting the minutes away until the sun would rise. What were they going to do? He couldn't really keep exact track of time no matter how much he tried and he felt more than a little disoriented. Minutes stretched into hours and he eventually felt the tug of sleep as well, lost in an eternal moment in time. He began to wonder if the night would ever end. 

Then, something happened. 

It started with what Dan assumed was the continuous howling of the wind outside. But this sound didn't stop, and instead increased in pitch and intensity until it was undeniably recognizable. It sent chills rippling across his skin.

Someone was screaming. A long, desperate, drawn out shriek. 

Danny jolted up into an alert position, as still as a frightened animal. He held his breath and listened carefully. The cries appeared to be getting closer. 

“Arin…” The name was barely a whisper on Dan’s lips, a warning. His friend didn't move, instead breathing softly in slumber. Dan reached over with one skinny arm and shoved Arin in the shoulder, jerking him back. 

“Wha..?” Arin’s eyes opened and he squinted, until the memory of their situation seeped back into him. “Oh, shit. Hey.” 

“Shhh.” Danny shot a frantic look to his friend, one finger pressed against his own lips as a signal to be quiet. “Do you hear that?” he breathed. 

Arin’s eyebrows narrowed in concern and he stilled as well. His face paled as another cry pierced the air. 

“Help!” It was a woman’s voice, agonized and terrified. 

Dan and Arin made frightened eye contact. “What do we do?” Danny’s voice was tight, a lump in his throat. 

“Help her, obviously!” Arin replied, sitting upright and then pushing himself into a crouching position. “We need to see what’s going on.” 

“Ar, it's still dark. We don't fucking know where we are! This could be a trap, something dangerous. We can’t go out there.”

Arin gave Dan a critical look and reached on the floor to pick up the flashlight from earlier. “Maybe this woman knows where we are. We have to talk to her. It’s all we have.” 

Dan’s eyes were wide in disbelief. “We are not prepared at all to deal with this! We don't even know what's going on. Arin, please, this is a bad idea.” 

Arin chose to ignore Dan’s warnings and stepped out of the tent anyway. Dan cursed under his breath and scrambled to his feet, clutching the blanket around his shoulders. Arin may be dumb and reckless, but there was no way Dan would let him deal with this alone. 

When Dan joined his friend outside, it looked almost darker than it had been before. Arin stood still, scanning the forest with the flashlight beam, no woman in sight. Dan could hear footsteps crushing dried leaves and twigs, brushing past bushes, but he couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. They were moving fast. 

“Please, you have to help me!” Finally someone came crashing through the wall of trees, her arms flailing and breaths coming out like broken sobs. She nearly ran right into them, but stopped just feet away from their tents. 

Dan was taken aback. The woman was blonde, probably mid 30’s, and she would have been attractive if not for the condition she was in. Her hair was matted, unbrushed, and looked like it had been hacked and chopped in some places. She had scrapes and cuts all along her legs and arms, from tangling with the thick undergrowth, no doubt. There was swelling on her face, bruises across her chest, and she was streaked with blood. 

“He’s coming,” she said, desperately and hoarse, bent with her hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath. She stared at the two of them. “You need to get out of here. Take me away from here. Hurry! Please, he’s coming.” 

“Who’s coming? Are you hurt?” Arin stammered, choking on his own words as every question tried to escape at once. 

Dan lifted his hands as a show of peace, and cautiously approached the woman. “Hey, it's okay. Just tell us what’s going on and we can help you. What happened?” 

The woman looked directly into Dan’s eyes. Her pupils were not dilated the same. “The doctor,” she said, before erupting into sudden cacophonous laughter. 

“He’s coming, he’ll get you! You better run! They’ll kill you! Hurt you! HaHAHAha!”

Dan backed up as swiftly as he could, terror rushing through his body. He didn't think he had ever been so disturbed in his life. The woman’s entire frame was shuddering as she laughed, but the sound was anything but humorous. It was hoarse, cracking hysterics. 

“The fuck…” Arin murmured, and he reached out for Dan’s wrist. He pulled his friend closer to him and could feel Dan’s racing pulse under his fingertips. 

The woman stopped laughing. There were tears rolling down her dirty cheeks now. “He’s here. It's too late.” 

Almost as if on cue, a gunshot went off, cracking deafeningly in the natural sounds of the forest. Blood erupted from the woman’s face where her eye had once been, and she went crumpling to the ground. 

Dan screamed and Arin shouted, both of them stumbling backwards. Arin dropped the flashlight in fear, but not so fast that they didn't see a bulky figure slowly walking through the trees towards them, a light beaming from his center. Arin was shaking so hard, from sheer terror and the frigid temperatures, that he could barely reach down to pick the flashlight up again. He shined it straight ahead. 

A man stood over the woman’s body, his rifle slung lazily over his shoulder as if it was nothing. A crooked smile rest upon his lips, toothy and wide. His dark hair was cut short but messy and tousled, and he wore a thick black coat. A light was attached to the front of his clothes, just enough so he could see where he was going. 

“Hello boys,” the strange man said with a hint of curiosity. 

Dan hadn't noticed he was clinging to Arin’s bicep until he finally broke his gaze from the forest man to look at his friend. Arin had an unreadable look on his face. 

“Who are you?” Arin growled, but his demeanor changed and he shrunk in on himself when the man lifted his rifle and aimed it directly at Arin’s abdomen. “Wait, please don’t shoot!” Arin’s hands were suddenly raised in the air, and Dan’s followed. His blanket dropped to the ground and the icy air bit into him again. 

The man chuckled. “It’s a shame what happened to Miranda here.” He indicated the bleeding body of the woman below him. “I was making such progress with her. She wouldn't listen, wouldn't cooperate. But I guess I will have to start over, and what better a surprise than stumbling upon two of you. You will be good boys, right?” He smiled again, forced and vile.

Neither Dan nor Arin said anything, just stood still with their eyes locked on the gun. Dan swore he could hear his heartbeat out loud. What were they supposed to do when faced with the barrel of a gun? 

“Answer me!” the man shouted suddenly, making both Dan and Arin flinch in fear. He hadn't lowered his rifle yet, and it was still pointing threateningly in their direction. “Will you be good?” 

For a brief moment, Danny made eye contact with Arin. The image of his best friend, shot through the chest by a mad stranger in the woods, appeared jarringly in his head and his breath caught in his throat. Arin must have been thinking the same thing, because they broke the frightened stare to respond to the man. 

“Yes..?” 

The stranger smirked and his piercing blue eyes sparkled, even in the dead of night. “Excellent. Get on your knees.”

Dan heard some kind of strangled sound from Arin, but the younger man complied, dropping to his knees and gently setting the flashlight on the ground. So Dan followed suit, shivers racking through his half naked body. His fingers were going numb and he was terrified; his only thought was that he was about to be executed here in the forest. It nearly sent him into a hyperventilating panic, but then he felt Arin’s hand brush his shoulder and he steadied himself. 

The man finally directed his rifle away from the two of them and flipped it around. He approached them quickly and before either of them really had time to think about it, he forcefully slammed the butt end of the gun into the side of Arin’s head. It took another hit to knock Arin out and send him tumbling to his side. Blood trickled from his temple where the skin had split. The strange man was smiling almost fondly. 

Dan hadn't even heard himself scream, calling out for his unconscious friend. Survival instincts overrode his immediate grief and Dan started to move, clumsily tripping over his own legs, but there was nowhere to go and the only things behind him were the long forgotten tents. 

It was a futile attempt, considering the man, presumably ‘the doctor’ that the woman mentioned, was only inches away to begin with. He stepped on Dan’s ankle before the lanky man could crawl any further, and then the rifle was coming down on Dan’s head as well. 

For the second time, Dan slipped into an unwelcome darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

Arin awoke to a throbbing ache in his head, sending cascades of pain through his body, and he wondered vaguely what day it was. He would have to record today, surely, and maybe work on some side projects with Ross. 

He made a move to open his eyes and transitioned into consciousness with surprising ease. He wasn't fully alert yet but he could see that he was in a new place. Images of the forest, its dark looming trees and eerie howling wind, appeared in his mind in the form of a convenient memory, as if someone else was supplying this information to him. 

Something was sticky on the side of his head, the source of his pain. Arin tried to reach up to feel it, but found that his hands were secured tightly behind his back, rendering him immobile and useless. A newfound panic hit him hard as he remembered why and how he had ended up in this position. They had been attacked. 

“Dan?!” Arin burst out abruptly and loudly. His friend’s safety and location was the first priority in his mind. He couldn't see anyone else in the room from where he had been placed. 

Thankfully his call was met with a response in the form of a muffled groan. Arin used most of his remaining energy, as well as a bit of momentum, to roll himself over to his other side. Now his head wound was brushing the ground, and he grimaced silently as the sore spot was scraped against the stone floor. 

He could at least see Dan now, and that's what mattered. His friend was also curled up on the floor in a similar predicament, rope looped tightly around his skinny wrists. Arin called out to him again while his eyes briefed over the new setting. 

This room was completely empty and gray. It was made of mostly stone, and what could have been cement or a similar mixture. There were rocks and large smooth stones composing the walls and floor, with a high flat ceiling. Nothing remarkable stood out about the room, except the wooden doorway off to the side. It looked old and worn, barely hanging on to the walls with rusted hinges.

“Hello?” Dan’s tired, crackly voice called Arin’s attention again. 

“Dan, it's me. Are you okay?” Arin asked a bit hastily. He was still trying to comprehend their situation but if anything was clear now, it was that they were in serious danger. It was a miracle they hadn’t been killed yet.

For a few long moments, Dan didn't answer. Eventually he spoke up with a breathless rasp. “Yeah, I'm okay. Just scared. Are you hurt? He hit you so hard, I th-thought, I…”

“It’s okay. I’m fine. It hurts a little bit but nothing I can’t handle.” Arin was only telling the partial truth. In honesty, his head was throbbing and his vision was fuzzy, blanking in and out like an unfocused camera lens. He could have a concussion. It must not have taken as much force to knock Dan out, because the older man wasn’t bleeding like Arin was. 

“He took us, he kidnapped us,” Dan began, his voice heavy. “He could kill us. We don’t know where we are, and you’re hurt. Why wouldn’t he have killed us yet?” 

“Maybe he wants to do something with us. He said he had been working on that girl? Whatever that means.”

“She said he wanted to hurt us,” Dan whispered.

“Right. But there’s no fucking way I’m letting that happen. We are getting out of here. This is a goddamn nightmare.” 

“Okay...” Dan answered, but he didn’t sound convinced. He squirmed around for a moment, just long enough for Arin to wonder what he was doing, but then Dan was able to push himself into a sitting position facing his friend. He looked tired, his face hollow. “Can you sit up?”

“I think,” Arin replied, and it was all he had the heart to say. He wriggled fruitlessly for a while, weighed down by his heavier body. Right as he began to admit defeat, he got the traction under his thighs that he needed to push himself up. He took a heavy, strained breath once he was seated upright. “Okay. Okay.”

They were facing each other now, sitting cross legged just a few feet away. Arin noticed Dan had obtained a shirt somewhere along the way, its black material hanging loosely on his thin frame. Arin didn’t want to think too much about where it had come from. It made him incredibly uncomfortable to imagine the stranger touching or handling them while they were unconscious. 

“Do you think you can untie me?” Danny asked softly. He didn’t want to push Arin, who was clearly denying the severity of his injury. 

“Yeah. Turn around?” Arin scooted forward awkwardly, his legs and ass scraping against the dusty ground to get closer to Dan. By the time Arin was near enough that he could feel Dan’s curly hair on his cheek, Dan had swiveled to face the other way. Arin did the same, so their backs were to each other but only inches apart. He felt Dan’s curled hands brush against his own fingers. 

“I can’t see, so this might take a while,” Arin said. Just then, he was hit with a wave of nausea like a powerful migraine and he leaned forward to combat the uneasiness. It washed over him swiftly and his eyes clenched shut. He made a quiet groan, gritting his teeth.

“Arin? Are you okay?” Danny was nervous, frantic almost. The thought of losing his friend in a strange place like this, alone and vulnerable, put him right on the edge. 

“Yeah. Oh, fuck.” Arin’s skin prickled with chills and he pushed himself back up, his shoulders hitting Dan’s with the force of the movement. “I’ve got it,” he said reassuringly as the pain died down, at least for the moment. 

Arin felt around for Dan’s hands and he squeezed them gently before reaching up to touch where the rope was tied around his friend’s wrists. He could tell the bonds were tight, just like his own, so he would have to work as quick as he could before their blood completely cut off and their hands became numb and useless. He located the bundle of knots that held everything together and began working on it with unsteady hands. 

It took Arin what felt like a lifetime to blindly loosen the ropes. He had dropped the knot several times, bent his fingernails and rubbed the pads of his fingers raw. He had pinched Danny’s skin more than once. The knowledge that their captor could enter the room at any moment left a strong sense of tension and urgency in the air. But finally, after a tedious and stressful amount of time, Arin pulled the strand that released Dan’s wrists. 

Dan sucked in a breath and pulled his arms around to his front to rub at the chafed skin. He shook his arms lightly to get the blood circulating again and winced as the sharp tingling set in. He didn’t let this distract him, though, and immediately went to work on Arin’s own restraints. 

This time it went much quicker since Dan could see what he was doing, and within a few minutes Arin had use of his hands once again. The first thing he did was turn around and pull Dan into a tight hug, squeezing the other man in his embrace. Dan returned the gesture and let his hands rest comfortingly on Arin’s shoulders. “It’s okay,” Dan whispered soothingly. “We’re okay.” 

Arin nodded weakly against Dan’s cheek. He sniffled once, gave a final squeeze, and then pulled back. 

Dan kept his hands on the other man’s shoulders. “Let’s look at your head, yeah?” He carefully turned Arin’s face to the side a bit, and leaned in closer to check out the spot where blood was seeping slowly from his temple. The area was bruising, turning a royal purple against Arin’s otherwise creamy skin. 

“We’ll have to find you some bandages since I doubt there will be a clean needle and some thread nearby. And I don't know how to put in stitches. Do you have a headache? Can you see okay?” Dan asked. 

“Yeah I can see. Just a small headache,” Arin answered, but he was keeping it on the simpler side. He didn’t want to scare Danny - they had to focus on getting out of here. 

“Okay. Keep me updated. Tell me if you need to slow down or stop,” Dan said before he pulled himself to his feet. He extended a hand for Arin to take and then hoisted the other man up as well. 

When the two of them were up, Arin was the first to speak. “We need a game plan. We’ll try the door, but if it’s open, then what?” 

Dan gave him a thoughtful look, his eyes narrowed in concentration. “We fight back. Obviously.” 

“Against that rifle?”

“We’ll catch him off guard. The two of us, we can take him, right? What other choice do we have?” 

Arin considered that. “Well, if it comes to it, we can fight. But let’s just try to sneak out of here if we can. We don’t know how many other factors there are in play.”

Dan nodded in acceptance. “I’ll check the door then.” He made his way across the stone room to the wooden door. He touched the handle, a cool metal underneath his palm, and turned it tentatively. To his disbelief, the door swung right open, revealing an equally as strange hallway. 

“Oh, hell,” Arin breathed. He quickly found himself at Dan’s side, peering out into the unknown. 

It looked like a plain hallway, made from the same stone as the room they had been in. 

“Why would he have tied us up in here without even locking the door?” Dan scoffed as he took a quiet step out into the hallway. 

Arin followed. “Maybe he wanted us to escape?” 

Dan suddenly stopped dead, his body tensed. “Say that again.” He looked over at his friend with wide eyes. 

“What? He wanted us to escape?” 

Dan put his hands on his head in frustration, carding his fingers through his curls. “I feel like there’s something I can’t remember, just out of reach. How we got here.”

Arin looked over in curiosity and his face lit up with an idea. “The last thing we remember is starting to record in the Grump Room, right? Maybe we were playing an escape game?”

Dan tensed again. “Yes! That’s it. We-” he trailed off as something seemed to click in his mind. Arin watched the color drain from his face. “You don’t think…?”

“What?” Arin’s throat felt tight. He couldn’t quite follow Dan’s line of thinking. 

“Nothing, it’s stupid.” Dan sounded dejected as he brushed off his thought. 

Arin didn’t want to let it go so easily, but they weren’t really in the situation to spend time talking about it. So instead, Arin led the way down the hall. There was only one way to go, since the room they had been in was at the end of the hallway. The whole hall had dust floating through the air and smelled like it hadn’t been inhabited in years. There were cracks, stains, and crumbles of rock all over. As they walked, they noticed an ancient looking staircase on the right, leading up to an unknown location. On their left was the door to another room like the one they had been in. 

“Should we look?” Arin asked. 

Dan nodded. “This kind of reminds me of those medieval castles. You know, when they have cellars in the basement.” 

“You think this is a castle?” Arin asked skeptically as he grabbed the handle to this door and slowly eased it open. As much as their surroundings did resemble the interior of an old castle, Arin couldn’t imagine where they would be that still even had castles. There certainly weren’t many plausible locations like this in the Los Angeles area. Perhaps they were farther north. Arin figured they had to still be in California. They couldn’t have been taken that far away from home without realizing it. 

“Could be. I really don’t know. It’s kind of a small cellar for a castle,” Dan said as the two of them stepped into the new room. It was essentially empty and identical to the previous room. However, this one had a small wooden table in the center, sitting ominously and begging to be inspected. On its surface rested some items. 

Danny approached the desk and peered at the contents sitting atop it. There was a note on yellow wrinkled paper, a lighter, and a pouch of green gel, much like the one Dan had seen in his tent. 

“What does it say?” Arin asked from his friend’s side. 

Dan picked up the paper and his eyes scanned over it, widening as he read. He shot Arin a frightened look before he started reading aloud. 

“Hello, and welcome to the Hollow Castle. Renowned for its advancements in supernatural and spiritual sciences, the castle has been the home of brilliant minds since the early 19th century. You have been chosen to participate in a valuable study that will provide data to continue the research that has been occurring here for decades. You have one simple task: Escape. That’s right, all you need to do is get out of Hollow Castle. However, there is a catch to this experiment. Throughout the castle, traps, tests, and hazards have been scattered to make your mission more difficult. If you are not careful, you may be caught or killed. Being captured means you are volunteering to undergo alternative experiments, which may not be as promising as what has been chosen for you now. This task may seem difficult, but it is not impossible. Your freedom depends on your cooperation. Good luck, subject!” Dan stammered at the last few words. 

“What the fuck?” Arin said, stunned. He brought his hand up to his head to massage his temples, careful to avoid the scabbing wound. He didn’t get it, nothing made any sense. 

Dan was starting to lose his breath and his hands shook as he set down the paper. 

“Arin. This is the game.” 

There was a moment of silence as Arin processed this. “What are you talking about?” 

“The game! _Immured!_ Arin, please, tell me you remember! It’s what we were going to play. You won the bid, it wasn’t the right game. Oh, god. Everything matches up perfectly.”

Suddenly the memories hit Arin hard and he closed his eyes as they played in his mind like a video tape. They had started a new recording for a game with no traces on the web. It had looked just like a cheesy old game, but now that Arin remembers, there had been no company name and no sponsors or affiliates. Nothing but a mysterious game cartridge. 

He remembers the cover, of a crumbling castle, and he knows exactly where they are. “We’re in Scotland. It’s 1975.”

“Oh no, nonono, that can’t be right. This isn’t possible.” Dan’s mouth was moving faster than his mind. “This isn’t real. It can’t be.”

“It has to be. It all but says it right here. There’s no other explanation,” Arin said, his voice unsteady, and he reached out to grab Dan. The other man’s face was in his hands and Arin gently pulled them away to hold his friend by the wrists. 

“People don’t just get sucked into video games!” Dan cried.

“Trust me, I know. This doesn’t seem possible. But whether it is or isn’t, we have to get the fuck out of here.” Arin tried to sound rational and composed. If one of them had to keep it together, Arin would try. “It doesn’t make any sense. But this is where we are and we have to focus on getting out.” 

Dan looked up slowly. “Are you real?” He asked with uncertainty. 

“Of course I’m real!” Arin barked defensively, but he had to take a step back so he didn’t come off as angry. The worst thing right now would be losing Dan’s trust. They would need each other to get through this, whatever the hell it was. 

“Show me,” Dan said. “I’m sorry, I just need to be sure.” 

“Okay.” Arin thought back to something personal between him and Dan that could prove his validity. “Remember when we were on set for _Good Game_ , and you walked in on me taking a piss? And you sent a picture of my ass to my wife.” 

This forced a weak laugh from Dan and he smiled softly. “Yes, Arin.” 

“Now you,” Arin said. 

“Oh, right. That night in Dublin-” Dan started. 

“Okay. You’re good.” Arin cut him off quickly before Dan could go any further with that memory. Of course, of all their experiences together, that was the one Dan would bring up. Arin could remember a tension in the air so thick you could cut it, and touches and gazes that lingered too long, dancing on the edge of something other than just friendship. A strange line had almost been crossed then, but neither of them had ever spoken about it or acknowledged it. Arin had almost forgotten, but the memory sent a whirling feeling through his insides. He didn’t want to talk about it. 

“So what now?” Dan asked as he picked up the lighter. He didn’t seem bothered by the quick change in subject, flicking the wheel and sparking a small flame into existence. He watched it dance softly against the stone backdrop before shutting the lighter off.

“I guess we have to keep moving,” Arin answered. There were so many things that didn’t make sense about this, things that were beyond what his mind could comprehend. The pain of his wound made him uneasy again and with a jolt Arin was leaning over the table, his hands flat against the smooth surface. “Shit.”

“Arin?” Dan reached out to touch his friend’s shoulder carefully. His gaze dropped to the table where Arin’s hands were and he saw the packet of green gel, and suddenly an idea clicked into place. 

“Hey, I’m going to try something,” Dan said slowly. He reached across the table and picked up the pouch, looking it over for any indication of its purpose, before tearing the top off with his teeth. He spit the plastic out. 

“What’re you doing…” Arin moaned quietly. He could feel the heavy darkness swarming around him, growing stronger with each pulse. He couldn’t fight it for much longer. The dripping blood had reached his neck now. 

“Just hang on,” Dan replied urgently as he squeezed some of the gel on the back of his hand. He rubbed it into his skin quickly, waited a few seconds to see if it would hurt him, and then when nothing happened he poured the whole packet on his fingertips. 

“Look at me.” Danny reached with his clean hand to turn Arin towards him, and then pressed the gel against the side of Arin’s head where his skin was split open. He rubbed it in with gentle pressure and Arin groaned miserably. 

After a few uncomfortable moments, Arin’s eyes opened again and he looked at Dan in confusion. A bewildered expression sat on Danny’s face. 

“It’s health!” Dan exclaimed before removing his hand from Arin’s face. To his amazement, the wound was pulling itself together, the skin melding back into place.

Arin could feel the difference. The nausea that had consumed him was fading away, replaced with a newfound energy and confidence. His pain began to dull and the throbbing in his head ceased into nothingness. He reached up, his mouth open in shock, to feel where he had once been hurt. There was nothing but the dried remnants of blood. 

“Holy shit.” Arin laughed almost hysterically. He met eyes with Dan and they stared at each other in stunned excitement. But that initial impressment soon dissipated as the reality of the situation returned. 

“We’re really in the fucking game,” Dan said dryly. “I wonder how much of this translates back to the real world. If our injuries would be there when we get back to our real bodies. Are these even our real bodies?” Dan’s hands ran down the length of his sides, feeling the familiar shape of his figure. 

“It feels like me. Everything seems like normal reality,” Arin commented. “I think this is real. I-I’m not sure how it’s even possible, but we are really here and- and I think we could really, genuinely die.” An edge of fear had slipped into Arin’s voice. 

“We’re not good at video games.” To balance Arin’s increasing anxiety, Dan was deadpan and empty, as though he was already defeated. “When have you ever played a game and not died?”

“Never!” Arin said and for just one moment, it felt like he and Dan were back in the Grump Room, joking to each other from across the couch. A normal day, recording a series where Arin repeatedly died and Dan would groan in the frustration and agony of watching the same montage over and over. Arin would shriek in pure rage, spitting nonsense as the death scene appeared on screen once again. They would tease each other, back and forth, until Arin finally beat the level and they could move on to another challenging round. But just as quickly as the memories came, they vanished, and Arin was back in the quiet stone room with Dan. 

“We have to get out of here,” Dan reiterated. “We can only do that together. And we should go, now. That man could be coming back any minute.”

“The doctor. I don’t think he’s coming for us. This is part of his plan. Our job now is exactly what he wrote on the instructions: Escape. We have to play the game.” Arin stepped towards the door and he exited the room to return to the hallway. There was only one direction to go now- up. 

Dan followed wordlessly, keeping close to Arin’s side. They shared a nervous glance before heading up the stairs. Their steps echoed in the otherwise silent basement. 

There weren’t any options left. They had pressed play, and the game was in motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No update next week, sorry! See you in two weeks.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two weeks turned into three weeks. My bad.

The door at the top of the stairs was much like everything else Arin had seen in the castle so far. It was wooden and large, significantly thicker and sturdier than the cellar doors. He gave it a tentative shove and it didn't budge, so he tried again with more force. The door remained shut and Arin frowned. 

“It's gotta be unlocked,” Dan commented. “I'll help you.” 

“On three?” Arin asked, making a shoving motion with his arms. Dan nodded in confirmation.

The two of them stepped back and then, in tandem on Arin’s count, slammed into the door. It creaked loudly and swung open, the force of the movement sending Dan and Arin flying into the room and dust swirling through the air. The door hit the wall with a loud thunk. 

“Oh, shit,” Arin mumbled mindlessly as he looked over the new room that had just been opened to them. The walls were lined with old shelves and pantries, which were bare except for a thick layer of dust. A long table in the middle spanned the length of the room and hooks hung from above it. There were counters, made of smooth stone, and a large fire oven at one end of the room. Just like the cellar, the kitchen was dry and arid, abandoned in time. 

“This must be the kitchen,” Dan said. He was the first to move forward, creeping past the center table to inspect the shelves and cabinets. Arin stayed put for a few moments. 

“Hey, be careful. Remember the note said there were traps. You don't want to accidentally set one off.” 

Dan looked up from where he had been leaning over the storage units. “Oh, yeah, thanks,” he said. 

Arin let Dan investigate the room and he turned to the left to where another door sat in the wall. He walked up to it and tried to comprehend it’s mechanisms. There were three bolt-like pieces of metal in the center of the door instead of a handle. When Arin nudged this door, it didn’t move. He traced the bolts with his hand, feeling the hole in the center where a piece was missing on each of them. 

“Hey, I found more health,” Dan piped up from a few yards away. He lifted another pouch in his hand, waving it slightly, to show Arin. 

Arin couldn’t help but smile despite the situation. “Great! Keep looking. I think this door is a puzzle, we’re going to need to find the pieces.” 

In curiosity, Dan headed over to look at the door himself. He crouched down and got close, peering at the metal bolts. “Goddamn, you’re right,” he said as he stood back up. “I guess we can look harder.” 

Arin nodded in agreement and set off on his own search of the room. He ran his hand along the length of the center table and then bent over to look underneath it, to no avail. Underneath the table were a few crates, so Arin slid them out to check them. To his surprise, inside one of the crates was a small box. He picked it up and glanced over the label. 

“Handgun ammunition. Holy shit, Dan, check this out.” Arin’s voice had risen in excitement. “That means we’ll probably get a weapon later on, like an actual game.” 

Dan looked down at the box disapprovingly. He wasn't as impressed, and Arin assumed it was because having a gun would imply violence later down the road. “Unless it’s false hope. That man said he was going to fuck with us. Do you even know how to use a gun?” 

Arin turned the box around in his hands. “Well, not really. But I can figure it out.”

“I hope so,” Dan answered, nervously eyeing the box of ammo. He returned to where he had left off opening cabinets and drawers and Arin stowed the bullets in the pocket of his coat. In the back of his mind he wondered where these clothes had come from. They were close to a perfect fit and were actually quite comfortable, but Arin didn’t think sweatpants and a jacket would be helpful in combat, if it came to it. 

But, did the logic of the situation even matter? They were trapped inside a virtual reality, Arin thought. Nothing had to make sense. 

“I got one,” Dan said, interrupting Arin’s thoughts, only moments later. He held up his outstretched palm where a dark smooth bolt sat in his hand. “We’re making progress.” His eyes seemed to lighten a bit at the prospect of escaping. 

“Awesome. Let's plug it in?” Arin replied, and the two of them wandered back to the door to slip the bolt into place. Dan tightened it in its notch. The door made a clicking sound once and then was silent. 

“What now?” Dan asked, his brows furrowed. “We’ve checked almost the whole room. I’ve looked in every cabinet.” 

“Uh, the oven? I was heading over there when you found that one.” Arin thought. “It looks too obvious.” He quickly found the handle of the oven and pulled it down. Sure enough, one of the other bolts sat inside, on top of a piece of paper. 

“Who the fuck would put paper in the oven?” Arin said, bewildered. 

Dan answered with an amused snort and grabbed the bolt from the oven, before going back to the door to fit it in place. Meanwhile, Arin picked up the note to read it aloud.

_Subject 23: Acquired on 1/14/19--. Female. 21 years of age._

_1/17 - Corruption process began. Subject showed great signs of distress, responded poorly to electrode stimulation and oxygen deprivation, was still resilient after 4 hours._

_1/21 - Subject began deteriorating when exposed to the component. The component greatly influenced the effects of physical damage, as was hypothesized.  
1/25 - Corruption process was completed with miraculous speed, in a total of 9 days. Subject freed._

Arin didn’t understand anything he had just read. He could piece together a few things - a woman had been captured, and something had been done to her. There was no indication of what the purpose of her suffering had been, or what happened to her afterwards. Arin wondered if this was the girl they had seen in the forest; the memory of her frenzied shrieking and battered body sent chills down Arin’s skin.

“What the fuck…” Dan stood up from fastening the bolt to the door. “Does any of that make sense to you?” he asked. 

“Not really. I know that it's bad, and we’re fucked,” Arin murmured as he ran his hand through his hair, sighing quietly. “I’ll hang on to this and we can keep looking for the last bolt.” He suggested. 

“Sure,” Dan answered hesitantly. He stood, resting against the center table, scanning the room, as Arin folded the paper to add to his pockets. 

“We should be getting a bag soon, I bet,” he commented, pushing aside bullets to make room for the note. “We’re starting to collect stuff.” 

“Hm, you think?” Dan replied, distracted by something that had caught his eye on the other side of the kitchen. When Arin turned around to look at him, Dan had already crossed the room and was crouched down to pick something up. 

“What’s that?” Arin took a few steps and was surprised when Dan faced him, a large stone in his hand. 

“It’s a rock. There’s not much else in this room besides this, so I think it might be a clue.”

“Dan, we’re in a stone castle, and there’s a stone on the floor. Real surprising.” 

“Yeah, well, just humor me, okay? You got any better ideas? We’ve picked this room clean.” 

Arin grunted in acceptance. He let Dan lead the way on this one, watching curiously as his friend moved past him and started heading back down the stairs to the cellar. 

“Hey, where are you going?” he asked, unable to hide his obvious nervousness. He didn’t want to be left alone here, so he quickly followed Dan. 

“Trust me, I’ve got this.” Dan answered with something that looked like a smirk. Arin shook his head slightly, baffled, but remained at Dan’s heels. They stopped at the base of the stairs and stood still for a few moments, long enough that Arin thought Dan had maybe forgotten what he came down here for. 

“There!” Dan said after a few minutes. He glanced at Arin and then pointed to a spot on the wall. At first, Arin saw nothing, and looked at Dan incredulously.

“What?”

Dan sighed dramatically. “There’s a rock missing, dumbass.” He went up to the wall and lifted the stone, placing it in a small indent where it looked like something had been carved out. Dan’s face lit up as the rock clicked into place, and he shot an excited look over to Arin. 

There was another clicking noise, and then the sound of rocks grinding against each other as a small panel of the wall moved, away, revealing the tiniest of space. There, resting in the divet, was the last bolt. 

“Oh!” Arin said, mouth agape. Dan beamed at him as he picked up the bolt and dashed back to the stairs, climbing them quickly. 

“How’d you know how to do that?” Arin asked as he ascended, his brows furrowed.

“Dunno. When I looked at it, my first thought was that it looked just like every other stone we saw down here.” 

“Huh. Well, thank you. It’s a good thing you’re around.” Arin waited by the table as Dan plugged the last bolt into the door. The door creaked and then the locks slid open. Danny pushed it open. 

From where Arin stood, he couldn’t see what was past the door, but he could definitely see the worried look that passed Dan’s face, like a cloud moving across the sky. “What is it?” he asked hastily, moving over to stand by his friend. 

The door they had just opened led to a massive room, far bigger than Arin would have expected, and it was in the worst shape of anything they had seen so far. The gray walls held shredded, dirty banners that once must have represented an honorable family. It was the first sign of furnishings they had seen. The ceiling was high and crumbling, with chunks of stone missing and mossy plants hanging from the cracks. Sunlight broke through where the ceiling was open, sending beams of light down to the water that flooded the floor. The water was dark and murky, filling the entire room. Arin couldn’t tell how deep it went, but there was no space on the perimeters of the room to squeeze by. 

On the other side, there was a set of elegant stairs with rails, much more decorative than the kitchen stairs. It lead to a balcony that wrapped around the room, with another set of doors. 

“Holy shit,” Arin muttered first. 

“Do we- Do we have to cross this?” Dan asked wearily. “I don’t know about this, Ar.” 

“It might be shallow,” Arin replied. A piece of the ceiling fell and landed in the water with a splash, sending out ripples and making the two men jump. 

“I think this is what we’re supposed to do,” he added, stepping through the doorway and into the room. There was a bit of dry floor before it dropped off into the pool of water. He tentatively stuck the tip of his foot into the water and pushed down. He couldn’t feel the bottom. 

“Won’t our clothes get wet?” Dan whined, fidgeting on the edge of the water. “Something could be in there. Water in horror games is never a good sign.” 

“I’m not thrilled about it either, but I don’t think we have a choice,” Arin tried to reason. He was nervous as well, eyeing the water skeptically, his muscles compelling him to stay on dry land. A quick look at Dan told him the other man would need some convincing too. 

“Dan,” Arin started, “if we don’t go where the game wants us to, I’m sure the doctor is going to come after us, or send some horrible bullshit our way.” 

Dan wearily glanced behind him into the kitchen before looking back towards the flooded room. He nodded with resigned determination; he knew Arin was right. “Okay. Let's just go quick.”

Arin slid into the water first. He sat down at the edge of the pool where the floor broke off into jagged pieces and dangled his legs into the water. It was frigid, stagnant water that immediately sent goosebumps across Arin’s skin. He sucked in a breath through his teeth and propelled himself in, splashing as he sunk into the depth of the water. The cold that he was normally familiar with was so much less appealing when the danger of the unknown lurked beneath the shadows. 

Arin couldn't touch the bottom from a comfortable floating level, up to his shoulders submerged. He wondered exactly how deep this cavern went if all six feet and two inches of him wasn't tall enough to reach the bottom. 

He turned around to look at Dan, who was hovering around the edge of the water like he was unsure of his next move. 

“Come on, Dan. It's okay,” Arin said reassuringly, although he was just as unsettled. “It's cold, be ready.” 

Dan nodded, determination setting in his body, and he dropped into the water. He almost went completely under and when the icy water hit his skin he shot right over to Arin to hold on to him. 

“Oh god.” Dan wrapped around Arin, gangly limbs and all, their legs tangling in the water. Arin was both caught off guard and bemused, so he allowed this for a few moments, even though Dan’s body was weighing him down. 

“We gotta move, man,” Arin said, patting Dan lightly on the shoulder before prying himself free. “Let’s go.” 

Dan took a deep breath and let go of Arin, centering himself in the water. “Okay, I’m good,” he announced, and then started swimming towards the other side of the room, the water rippling around him. 

Arin watched for a second before following suit, kicking his legs to propel himself through the dark pool. He swam as fast as he could, because he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. He just wanted to reach the other side. 

As it turned out, his intuition was right. About halfway across the room Dan slowed to a stop, turning to face Arin, who was lagging behind by a few feet. Arin never got to hear what Dan was going to say, why he had stopped, because just seconds later Dan disappeared under the water, sucked into the black depths, leaving nothing but some bubbles behind on the surface. 

It happened so quick that Arin barely had time to process what he had seen. 

“Dan!” he screamed, splashing madly over to where his friend had just vanished. Arin spun around in the water, looking all over the room to no avail. Everything looked the same as it had been before. The water was dark and still. 

He was going to have to go under. 

Taking a deep shaky breath, Arin plunged underneath the surface of the water and swam down. His eyes were wide open, scanning back and forth, but he couldn't see anything. He looked right at his own hand and he could barely make out its features. It didn't make sense to him why the water was so dark. What the hell was in it? Was he even swimming in water?

Arin swam desperately with no direction. He flung his arms out as he sunk deeper, flailing them about in hopes of brushing against Dan’s body. He kept going down - at least, what he thought was down - clawing and kicking in the water. His lungs were burning by the time he touched the bottom of the pool. It was rough and jagged, like it had been torn up or chiseled. 

The room, which had once been a beautiful gathering place, had become a flooded cavern, rotted away with time. 

Arin repositioned so he was facing upward and kicked off the floor with a powerful spring to propel himself back up. He broke the surface and gasped, sucking in air rushedly. He glanced quickly around the room for any other indication of Dan, but there was nothing. His panic was building and his head was pounding. He dove back in once again. 

Arin kicked his legs faster this time in a different direction, grasping for anything. Dan couldn't have gone far, unless the pool broke off into branches and tunnels. If that was the case, the chances of Arin finding Dan would be slim to none. He would be gone for good. 

The second time Arin came up for air, he barely gave himself time to breathe before plunging in again. His sense of time had been warped and he couldn't tell if it had been seconds, minutes, or hours since Dan had vanished. He was so frantic, flailing through the water. He could never give up on his best friend, not so early in the game. 

When his hope was just starting to waver, Arin felt his hand brush up against something in the water. He immediately grabbed it tight and pulled himself towards it. Whatever he touched was slimy and smooth, and it definitely wasn’t Dan. It began to thrash in his grip, whipping Arin side to side, water rushing past him. He collided with something else next to him and reached out with his other hand as he let go of the squirming appendage. 

Groping blindly, Arin could make out a limp body. Dan. He latched on tight and hastily began swimming up towards the surface, his lungs screaming as his body ran on pure adrenaline and survival instincts. He broke the surface with a gasp and circled an arm around Dan’s torso, using the other to propel himself towards the ledge that indicated the end of the pool. He had crossed the rest of the distance in his search, thankfully, so he only had to drag Dan a few feet before the two of them were crashing against the stone shore, sopping wet. 

Arin clambered out of the water on his hands and knees, chest heaving and hair dripping in his face, before turning to pull Dan the rest of the way. He hunched over the older man and searched his face for any sign of life as he caught his breath. Dan’s skin was pale and his body was still. He wasn’t breathing. 

“Fuck,” Arin muttered, racking his brain for any memories of the proper procedure for CPR.The only thing he could remember was the basics, so he placed his hands flat on Dan’s chest and pushed down hard, and then repeated the movement a few more times. He didn’t know how many times to do it, or how long in between, so all he could do is hope it would work. He gave several more forceful pumps.

After a few more heavy shoves to the chest, Dan sputtered and choked, his body spasming as water rushed out of his mouth and spilled down his cheeks. Arin froze and ceased his movements, his eyes wide and searching Dan’s gaze for signs of life. 

“Dan?” he said tentatively and then turned Dan’s head to the side as more water came bubbling out of his parted pink lips. Dan coughed harder, retching and gasping, until he was able to limply roll onto his side and then up onto his hands and knees. His arms shook with strain as he emptied his body of the murky water, and when he could breathe again he collapsed on his stomach. 

Dan took deep shuddering breaths, his eyes half closed as he tried to focus on Arin. 

“Oh my god, Dan, you’re okay. I-I was so scared, I thought I lost you. You just disappeared, a-and I couldn’t find you-” Arin stammered, his throat closing and cutting him off before he could ramble on. The feelings of relief that washed over him made his eyes prickle with tears. 

“Arin, you saved me. Thank you,” Dan croaked, tilting his head to the side to look up at his friend. 

“Y-yeah, I guess,” Arin replied with a small nod, placing a reassuring hand on Dan’s back to rub soothingly. “Are you- do you feel okay?” He didn’t really know what else to do now. 

“Yeah, I think so,” Dan answered. He slowly sat up, with Arin’s help, and pushed some strands of wild soaked hair out of his face. As he adjusted his position, he happened to look straight ahead and his eyes widened in fear as he seemed to see something. Arin turned his head quickly to follow Dan’s gaze, anxiety settling in his stomach before he could even see what had Dan’s face paling. 

Across the room, at the other end of the pool near the kitchen, something was emerging from the water. It pulsated as thick black tentacles pulled it out of the water and onto the floor. The rest of its body followed, and then it stood up to full height. It was a writhing mass of some black substance, with countless branching tentacle-like limbs, and it dripped on the floor as it moved. There were no discernable features about it like a head or eyes and it crawled from the edge of the pool with convulsive movements. 

Dan and Arin watched in horror as the creature moved jerkily to the kitchen door, slipping inside the room and out of sight. 

“What the fuck is that?” Dan asked, his voice raising in pitch. 

Arin grimaced. “That’s what attacked you. I felt it, while I was looking for you. I don’t know what it is.” It was too disgusting and upsetting to think about. 

Dan was breathing hard, his eyes wide and still fixed on the kitchen door across the room. “Oh, god, do you think there’s more of them?” 

“Probably,” Arin said. He couldn’t tear his gaze from where the creature had just been either. It had left a gooey trail of black sludge where it walked. “I bet it’s a regular enemy.” They couldn’t forget they were playing a game, and survival games had enemies, bosses, minibosses. The list was almost endless. Finally Arin met Dan’s frightened eyes. 

“We should keep going. I don’t want to be in here anymore,” Dan said shakily. He tore his gaze from the kitchen door to look up at Arin, his eyebrows furrowed worryingly.

As tired as Arin was, he agreed. He got to his feet and extended a hand for Dan, a parallel of what they had done earlier when Arin’s head wound had made him unsteady. Now it was Dan’s turn to be wobbly on his feet, his body adjusting to coming back to consciousness after being waterlogged. 

Something about Dan’s trembling figure sent a pang of affection through Arin and he reached out to pull Dan into a hug. Their wet bodies pressed together as Arin wrapped his arms around Dan’s waist and pressed his cheek against the other man’s neck. Dan didn’t move at first, but then let his arms rest on Arin’s shoulders. It wasn’t the first time they’d hugged in the past few hours, and it wouldn’t be the last. 

“Don’t do that again,” Arin mumbled. He wasn’t completely showing how shaken he had been from losing Dan. The feeling of being alone had been so terrifying, so overwhelming, but he pushed the thoughts out of his head and just held Dan for a moment. He knew things were only going to get worse, but he didn’t want to think about it now. 

“I’m here,” Dan whispered, stroking Arin’s hair with one hand. “I would have drowned if it weren’t for you. Or worse. That thing would have killed me.”

Arin squeezed him tighter, nodding against his neck, and then let go. He exhaled a quavering breath and set his jaw. 

“Well, it didn’t. We’re okay now. We can do this, together.” He gave one long look at the mysterious black pool before shifting his gaze to the stairs, his stomach filled with dread at the threat of what was to come. Something told him they definitely hadn’t faced the worst of it yet, but all they could do was press on. 

So they did.


	5. Chapter 5

At the top of the stairs, Dan looked back over the room where he nearly drowned. He gazed at the black untouched surface, gleaming where the light hit it, and he stared at the clumpy wet trail that was left behind by his nonhuman attacker. He could still feel the imprint of its heavy appendage around his ankle, snaking up his leg and dragging him under the water. Luckily he hadn’t been hurt in any other way and he could still walk, even after being thrashed around underwater. 

He and Arin had gone up the spiraling stairs at their end of the large room and they now stood on the balcony overlooking the room. Facing the way they had come, Dan could see a door on the each side of the balcony, a room over the kitchen. Then there was the big door behind them that had fancy engravings in the wood and metal furnishings. It was clearly a more important door, somewhere they were supposed to go. 

At first, Dan thought Arin would want to regroup and maybe strategize or come up with a game plan. But now that they were safe from the water’s edge and idled atop the balcony, Arin was silent, leaning against the railing to oversee the room much like Dan had. He made no move to speak, even as Dan looked him over worriedly. 

It was hard to accept what they were facing, but Dan knew they had to keep going. 

“Arin? You wanna check out those doors down there?” Danny suggested softly, raising a hand to indicate the identical doors that the balcony led to. 

Arin looked up with a slight start. “Yeah,” he answered, turning away from the railing and signaling that Dan lead the way. Dan obliged and began heading towards the door on the right. 

“What do you think is gonna happen next?” he asked as he walked, simply for the sake of getting Arin to talk. Also, it didn’t hurt to keep them on their feet with speculation. If they could predict a plotline, like they sometimes did with games, they would be more prepared for what is to come.

Arin’s gaze was low. “Well, that monster we saw has something to do with whatever’s happening here. We saw in the note that the doctor is doing something to his victims, and weird creatures like that don’t just show up from nothing.” 

“The corruption,” Dan finished the thought as he cautiously put his hand on the door and nudged it open. Thankfully there were no more slimy creatures inside; the small room was filled with more shelves that lined every wall. They weren’t empty like the ones in the kitchen downstairs, but instead held plates, dishes, and silverware. Some looked porcelain and modern, but others were made of wood or stone, like they had survived hundreds of years and passed through generations of families. Dan suspected they had. If the doctor was to be believed, the castle had been occupied for close to 200 years. 

“Hey, Dan,” Arin chimed up from across the room where he had gone to explore. He sounded genuinely pleased, so Dan quickly crossed the distance to meet him. Arin turned around to face Dan, a black bag in his hands, held out from his chest. 

“It’s a backpack! I can carry our shit,” Arin grinned and Dan felt his chest warm fondly. “Can you hold this for a sec?” 

Dan nodded as Arin passed him the bag and he watched as Arin fished around in his coat pockets. He pulled out the papers from earlier and the ammunition he had found in the kitchen. When Arin reached out for the backpack again, Dan handed it back to him and Arin slipped the items inside. 

This reminded Dan of the health pouch he had in his own pant pocket. He slid his hand in and felt around, grabbing the small container and giving it to Arin. The younger man took it and stowed it away with everything else they collected. Then, he pulled the backpack on around his shoulders. 

It was then that something strange was made apparent to Dan. He narrowed his eyes for a second, looking Arin up and down, before his gaze dropped to his own body. He grabbed a piece of his shirt in his fingers and rubbed the fabric together. It was dry. 

“Our clothes dried,” Dan said curiously. “I didn’t even notice it happen.” It had only been about ten, maybe fifteen minutes since Arin had pulled Dan out of the water, but their clothes had somehow miraculously dried in that amount of time. They had been sopping wet and stained with the tinted water, but now their clothes were back to normal, as if they hadn’t swam through the pool at all. 

“Huh. Wow,” Arin’s brows raised as he pressed his flat hands along his own clothes. “A game mechanic?” he suggested. 

Dan was still looking himself over. “Yeah. That's freaky. I wonder how else this game can manipulate us.” He peered up at Arin. The implications were scary. They were under the control of some otherworldly power, whatever had brought them here and created this world. Dan still couldn't understand why this happened or what the purpose was, if there even was one. Perhaps it was a streak of bad luck, an instance of poor timing. Or there was something more sinister at hand.

“Do you see anything else? I’m tired of looking at shelves,” Arin asked when he was done fidgeting with the backpack, adjusting the straps to make it fit tightly. 

Dan didn't answer at first, instead sweeping his gaze over the rest of the room. It looked like most of the same. Then his eyes caught on something that practically shined in comparison to the rest of the room’s drabness. He stepped over and picked it up, his stomach clenching as he realized what it was. 

“Another note. You want me to read it?” 

“Go ahead.”

_2/26/18--_

_Today, [smudged], upon completion of the well in the rear courtyard, discovered an unusual metallic liquid that seeped from the very soil we are built upon. The fluid rose and mixed with the water, making it undrinkable for now, until we are aware of its safety. We have not yet researched the properties of this liquid, but we have collected samples to be taken to [smudged] for testing. At the other nine wells, there have been no traces of this liquid, so we have cause to believe it is not contaminating any other water source. I will keep a written statement of what new information presents itself._

Dan wrinkled his nose in confusion. “I don’t like this,” he said quietly, folding the paper up and handing it to Arin. His friend took it and placed it in the backpack with the other note. 

“Well, I think some fucked up shit is happening,” Arin concluded. He had moved to the other door in the room and was jiggling the handle open. Dan ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. 

“Yeah. What do we know so far? Weird metal in the wells, and torture. Oh, and freaky water monsters.” 

“It’s definitely a bit more complicated than that, but it’ll make sense the more we play. This is just your classic crazy, evil scientist. That’s all.” 

“That doesn’t make it any easier. How can you be so relaxed?” Dan responded, following Arin through the door. It led them to the other side of the balcony, so they could head back to the big doors that would take them to their next setting. 

“I’m not relaxed, I’m super fucking scared. I’m just trying to keep it together. I’m about one more monster away from a breakdown,” Arin replied with a concerned glance back at Danny. He crossed the balcony and stopped in front of the big doors as Dan caught up. The two of them stared for a few moments, both too nervous to make the first move, until Dan finally caved and shoved the doors open. They swung slowly, creaking as they glided apart, and revealed the soft sunshine of mid morning. 

Dan shielded his eyes as he stepped outside, and he took in a deep breath of fresh air to clean all the dust and water residue out of his lungs. Arin followed close behind, swiveling his head to check out their new surroundings. 

The curved stairs had led them up and out of the dining wing of the castle, and into the courtyard. They were in an enclosed clearing, surrounded by a high wall of stone on each side that formed a rectangle around the yard. It looked like the stone walls had once been lookout points, or were frequently guarded by walking patrols. Now, however, they were long abandoned. 

In a few places, the walls opened up to reveal tunnels, leading to other parts of the castle. Dan counted each time the courtyard branched off; there were four paths in total, two on each side, and they had just come from one. That left three to explore. 

To the left was the entire castle itself, resting tall and proud against the sky’s hazy backdrop. It wasn’t a huge castle, but it seemed just large enough to get lost in. Then below that was the grand entrance, with big fancy doors that were engraved and decorated with jewels. A set of steps led up to the doors, and on each side was a lion figure made of stone. Dan thought it was appropriate; not too lavish, not too modest. 

The last thing Dan noticed, to the right, were the gates to the courtyard. They were tall and the rails ended in dangerous points, threatening anyone who tried to climb over or infiltrate. They were metal and rusted with age, and a heavy chain clasped them together. Through the slots of the gate Dan could see a dirt path leading away, down a hill, with trees lining either side. 

“Thank god for some sunlight. I feel better already,” Dan said with a genuine smile. The scene before them was so non threatening and almost peaceful enough that he could forget they were trapped within a virtual reality. The skies were still dotted with clouds, but just enough light filtered through to cast soft shadows. 

“I don’t trust this,” Arin said wearily. “It’s too deceiving. Something bad is going to happen.” 

“I think that’s the point of the game. Everything bad is happening. We just gotta keep going.” 

Arin gave a curt nod and looked around. “Where do you want to go first, then?” 

It would make the most sense to follow the branching archways first, since the castle doors were an obviously important location, and based on what they’d done so far, they’d likely need a key to get in. 

“Let’s go to the one on the left,” Dan suggested, and he waited for Arin to start walking first. They padded over, crunching the soft sandy gravel under their feet, and headed down the path. There was no indication of what they were heading towards. 

After a few yards they entered a large room with high walls, and it was the most occupied place they had been to so far. Dan could see tables and machinery, piles and pieces of metal thrown about, and items hanging on the walls. He recognized axes, swords, daggers, shields, and even tools he couldn't identify. There were hammers on tables, tweezer-like clasps, wooden hilts to unfinished weapons. It looked like the workers who had been here dropped everything and left mid project. 

“It’s the armory,” Arin supplied. 

Dan thought back to medieval shows he had watched, and to his surprise, the items in the room were surprisingly similar. They had found a gold mine of weapons. 

“Shit. Let’s start looking, then,” Dan said once again. He set off in his own direction, like he had many times already. He raked his eyes over the sharp swords and blades, reflecting as he walked by them. Some were so large that he didn’t even think he could pick them up if he tried. The blacksmith who had resided here must have worked hard, because the armory held quite the collection of tools. 

Eagerly, Dan scanned for something he could pick up and use. He would feel much safer having his own weapon, in the event that another creature appeared, which was almost a complete certainty. 

Something on the table in front of him caught Dan’s eye, so he approached it slowly. There was a deep crimson stain on the wood, dripping down onto one of the table’s legs, like someone had cut himself while sharpening a blade. Dan let this thought mull over in his head until something else pulled his attention. There, on the next bench over was a perfect sized axe, shining from an invisible light. In a trance-like movement, Dan reached out and picked it up. 

It felt heavy and solid in his hand, like it belonged there. Like it was meant for _him_. He turned it over, marveling at how shiny the metal was for its age. It was double sided and curved in a beautiful arch. It was a piece of art. 

Enthusiastically, Dan whipped around to show Arin what he had found. 

He had just a second to hear the creaking sound of wood and cables pulling and he flinched back an inch before a massive saw blade came swinging down from the ceiling, right where his face had been just half a moment before. There was the sound of metal moving quickly through the air, and the _shink_ of something being sliced. 

The blade, a disproportionate replica of the axe Dan held in his hand, swung back up to the other side of the ceiling, where it lodged in the wall and stayed put. 

Dan watched, deathly still, as a curly bunch of his own hair went floating down to the floor. He hadn’t even had time to scream before it was over. It happened in a brief second, and if he hadn’t winced back at that exact moment then he would have been dead, sliced right in half. In a delayed reaction, his stomach filled with icy fear. 

“Dan!?” Arin’s panicked voice rang out from across the room. Then Arin was there, by Dan’s side, clutching at his shoulders and pulling him away. Dan’s eyes were wide and his body was frozen with shock, and the axe remained in his hand. His knuckles were white. 

“Holy fucking shit, Dan, are you okay? Dan?” Arin was in his face, running his hands across Dan’s arms and sides, feeling for wounds. Dan couldn’t move. He blinked a few times and managed to focus in on Arin’s horrified expression, and then he was sucking in a deep breath and he could feel his limbs again. 

“I-I’m okay,” he said as he snapped out of his trance. He shot a mortified glance up at where the blade rested in the ceiling and Arin followed his gaze. 

“Oh my god-” Arin started like he had more to say, but then closed his gaping mouth and looked at Dan with wide eyes. 

“I need to be more careful,” Dan said hollowly. Suddenly a deep anger rose in his chest, at himself, for so foolishly strolling around the room without even a thought of caution to his actions. The doctor had directly told them there would be traps and danger at every turn, and Dan had still let his guard down, even after being nearly killed once already. His free hand had curled into a fist to match the one gripping his axe. 

“It's not your fault. None of this is your fault. This is a bad place, you can't expect us to navigate through here like we’re fuckin’ soldiers,” Arin spoke quickly. “We just have to learn from our mistakes.” He still had one flat palm resting on Dan’s shoulder, like he didn't want to let him go. Again. 

Dan struggled to conceal the frustration on his face. “Okay. No more fucking around.” He met Arin’s eyes. “This is real.” He couldn’t keep making mistakes like this if he wanted to have any chance of escaping with his life.

“Yes, it’s very real, and we-” Arin was cut off by a faint scraping noise, like grinding metal or something dragging on the floor. Both he and Dan tensed, instinctively crouching just a bit into a defensive position. Dan held the axe close as he looked over the room. Nothing had changed and it didn’t seem like anything was moving, so after a few moments he relaxed. The sound didn’t stop though, instead continuing its ominous echo through the room. 

When the coast was clear, Arin took a few tentative steps back in the direction he had come running from. Dan gave one last pensive glance at the larger axe in the ceiling before following quickly. He hovered right by Arin’s heels, keeping a lookout around the room as Arin rummaged for items. 

It would only make sense for something important to be hiding in this guarded room.

Sure enough, when Arin slid open a drawer in one of the desks, he sucked in a quick gasp of air and Dan looked over to see what had caught his friend’s attention. In the drawer rested one single item: a handgun. 

Carefully, Arin reached in and picked it up, turning it over in one hand to inspect it. He shared a look with Dan that revealed his hesitation, his fear. 

“It’s okay. We have protection now,” Dan said, surprised at how level he sounded despite everything that happened to him so far. His tone certainly didn’t reflect how he felt inside - sick to his stomach with dread. 

“Can you grab the bullets from our bag?” Arin asked breathlessly, turning to the side so Dan would have easier access to the backpack. Dan unzipped the pocket and reached inside, feeling for the box of ammo. He pulled it out and zipped the bag back up as he handed the box to Arin.

“The game wouldn’t have given this to us unless we needed it,” Arin said with a low voice. The sound of clashing metal still hadn’t stopped, but was like a buzzing background noise now. 

With shaking hands, Arin loaded the bullets into the gun. A sense of urgency had filled the air, making it hang thick around them. Dan almost felt dizzy. He could smell something, too, like ozone wafting from the hall they had come in through. 

“Hurry up,” Dan breathed, pushing some hair out of his face with his free hand. “I’m getting freaked out.” 

Whatever was going on had affected Arin too. He was sweating and having much more trouble loading the gun than Dan would have expected. He dropped a few bullets on the floor, swore angrily, and snatched them back up. Finally, the unmistakable click of a loaded gun hit Dan’s ears and he breathed a sigh of relief. 

The clattering noise was getting louder, increasing in pitch and intensity until it was seemingly shaking the air itself. Arin’s face was pale and his eyes were wide with fear as he took the gun in his hands properly and started creeping towards the exit. 

Dan could feel his own heart pounding. He didn’t know what was making him feel this way, what had caused the sudden shift in the atmosphere in the room. He gripped the axe tighter and followed Arin. He needed to get out of here. 

As they approached the hallway and rounded the corner, where the noise had reached deafening volumes, Dan saw the source of the sound and the smell. 

Crawling slowly down the hall was something in the vague shape of a human but much taller and unnatural, with disproportionately lengthed arms, thick around the shoulders and hands that were more like stumps. It was a deep crimson and was wet like exposed muscle and flesh, and from its gaping black mouth erupted the scraping metal noise. 

The smell of blood hit Dan hard and the hall seemed to spin around him. It was only a few yards away, approaching them steadily and awkwardly, as if it hadn’t been designed to walk. Dan thought it looked like an imposter; something trying to take the form of a human. 

He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. 

When the creature noticed them, it went silent and stopped moving. The lack of noise was almost louder than the terrible grinding, but Arin seemed to snap out of his daze when the creature’s shrieking ceased. He stared with round eyes and a half opened mouth that matched Dan’s expression.

Then, in the most horrifying moment of Dan’s life, the creature started _running_. It’s big clunky legs were bowed as it charged and its mouth opened wider than Dan would have thought possible. As the monster closed the distance between them, Dan took his axe in both hands and screamed. 

As he did this, he heard the bang of a gunshot and the creature staggered, but only for a second before it was sprinting again. Dan heard another shot and he glanced over to where Arin stood, legs apart to brace his body, with both hands on the gun and a look of cold concentration on his face. 

The creature was in front of them now, lunging at Arin with bared teeth, so many teeth, and time seemed to slow as Dan raised his axe over his head and swung down as hard as he could. He felt it collide with flesh, heard another gunshot, and felt the hot spray of blood against his face and neck. 

There was one final shot and the creature collapsed on the floor, twitching and spasming at their feet. Dan had backed up and let go of the axe; it had cut so deeply into the creature’s neck that he couldn’t remove it. 

Despite the ringing in his ears, a shocked laugh bubbled up from Dan’s throat and his face split into a triumphant grin. “Arin, we did it! We killed it!” he gasped, turning to look at his friend. 

Arin stood stiffly except for his hands, which trembled slightly. Upon hearing Dan’s voice, he ripped his gaze from the floor, where the creature’s steaming body bled out, to meet Dan’s eyes. 

Arin’s face was as white as the moon and he stared at Dan with glassy unresponsive eyes. 

“A-Arin?” Dan lowered his gaze to Arin’s chest and suddenly he realized the blood he felt on his skin didn't belong to the creature. 

Arin’s legs gave out and he crumpled to the floor at the same moment that Dan lunged at him, arms outstretched to catch his friend. 

Dan cried out in shock as he collapsed over the other man. He took Arin’s tattered shirt and shoved it up to his neck to reveal the source of the deep crimson that was spreading quickly into the clothes. 

Dan blanched as he assessed the damage. 

The creature must have clawed or bit Arin right across his chest as it launched at them, leaving the flesh shredded and bubbling with blood. Dan felt dizzy with nausea at how severe the wound was, like someone had taken a serrated spoonful right out of Arin’s body. There was blood everywhere, hot and sticky on Dan’s hands, causing him to slip as he fumbled with Arin’s body in his attempts to reach the backpack his friend had been carrying. 

Arin was fading fast, and Dan could faintly hear his own crying through the blood rushing in his head. He pulled with all his strength and managed to yank the backpack out from under Arin’s limp body. He tore it open faster than he would have thought possible, reaching in and pulling out the packet of health with shaking, blood soaked hands. 

“Stay with me, Arin, stay with me,” Dan whimpered frantically before biting the top of the health packet off. He didn't even know if it would work with such a deep wound, if it was too late to save his friend. Arin’s eyes had rolled into the back of his head and he wasn’t moving, but the blood kept dribbling down his skin, onto the floor, filling the room with the putrid smell of death. 

Dan didn't understand how the game worked- if there were lives, or save points, or how much of what happened would translate back into reality. He didn't want to test it now. He squeezed the entire packet across Arin’s chest and dipped his fingers in to spread it, retching as the warm blood coated his fingertips. 

Dan’s hands shook so hard that he almost felt like he was making things worse. When the whole packet had been emptied and smeared across Arin’s torso, Dan sat back on his haunches while he caught his breath. There was blood halfway up his forearm, as if he had just performed surgery in the 19th century. It felt like he had. 

There wasn’t anything else he could do. Arin had lost too much blood. There are some injuries you just can’t come back from, Dan thought. He felt the tears renew, building in his eyes and rolling down his cheeks to mix with Arin’s blood. How could he continue now? How could he do _anything_ after this? Dan could only hope that Arin was awake in the real world, ready to shut the game down and return things to normal. But here, he was gone, and Dan was alone. 

“Oh, god, Arin,” Dan tried to contain his cries. 

As the despair of the situation sunk into Dan’s head, he noticed Arin’s left hand twitch, just barely, the fingers flicking up before falling limp again. Dan’s eyes widened and he leaned forward, his hands grasping at Arin’s body again. 

“Arin?!” Dan gasped through his sniffling. He searched Arin’s expression for movement, something to indicate life, but his friend was motionless. His gaze dropped to the wound and he felt a jolt of anxiety as he realized it was slowly closing up. The skin was stretching together like tendrils, reaching for the other end and connecting the two frayed sides. Some blood was pushed up and out of the wound as it closed, uniting Arin’s skin seamlessly. Dan’s mouth gaped as he watched the color return to Arin’s face. 

It worked. _It worked._

Dan couldn’t make himself move, in fear of reversing the effects of the health. He sat, waiting for Arin to wake up, his chest rising and falling with his nervous breaths. 

Finally, Arin cracked open his eyes and when he saw Dan’s panicked expression he flinched. 

“Where- what the hell?” Arin said, squinting with confusion, raising a hand to rub at his face. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

Dan flung himself forward, taking Arin’s form in a tight embrace. He was sobbing dryly into Arin’s chest as his friend sat up, pushing Dan with him. Arin, dazed, patted Dan’s hair reassuringly. 

“Ar, you just fucking _died_. You were gone,” Dan choked through the panic that was slowly fading away. “T-The monster, it hurt you, and-and you bled out, right in front of me.” Dan lifted himself from Arin’s chest, one hand on his friend’s shoulder, and their eyes met just inches apart. 

“Oh,” was all Arin could say. 

Dan struggled to regain his composure, feeling his tears dry on his cheeks and resisting the temptation to wipe at his face with his filthy hands. He was so shaken, so utterly devastated by what he had seen, that he didn’t know how he could keep going. 

_Arin went through the same thing_ , Dan thought as he remembered being dragged underwater by the first creature. They both nearly lost each other once already, and they had barely made any progress in the game aside from finding a few notes. The game was definitely getting more challenging, and more was at stake. 

“Dan,” Arin began, “we’ve had a lot of close calls, but we need to stay focused. Every time something happens to us, it will just prepare us for later on in the game. I’m okay now, I’m here, and I’m not going to let either of us get hurt again.” 

“You don’t know what I saw, Arin. I watched you die,” Dan said weakly. He just wanted to go home and forget all of this, to return to the Grump Couch and play some stupid easy mindless game. 

Arin touched Dan’s cheek lightly. “I thought you were dead too, back in the water, okay? But we’re both still here and we have what it takes to get out of this place.” He smiled softly. “We’re even now. We’ve both scared each other once.” 

Dan nodded stiffly. He heard what Arin was saying, but he didn’t want to accept it so easily. Whoever, or whatever, was doing this to them was sick. Forcing them to watch each other get hurt over and over while subjecting them to a confusing and dangerous game. Dan relished the idea of smashing the game to pieces once he was free. 

“Okay. You’re right. This has happened too many times already,” Dan replied. “We need more health, and bullets too, I think.” 

“I’m pretty sure I have one shot left in the gun. You used the health pouch on me?” Arin asked. 

Dan nodded nervously. “I had to.” 

Arin looked troubled, but he only sighed. “That’s okay. I’m glad you did, I’m just worried. We should find more soon. This backpack only has papers now.” He reached over to the backpack and spared a glance at Dan’s bloodied hands, but Dan could tell he was trying not to look at them. 

“Yep, just papers,” Arin confirmed, looking back up at Dan. He picked up the handgun that had fallen to his right, and then stood up. As Dan climbed to his feet as well, he got a good view of Arin’s dirtied shirt. It was stained with blood, but it had dried already, just like their clothes had when they were in the water. Dan pushed the thought into the back of his mind. He couldn’t handle the concept of physics in the game, and how this reality was different from his own. 

“Hey, Dan,” Arin said quietly, an edge of tension to his voice. Dan turned around quickly to see what caused Arin’s change in demeanor, and he furrowed his brows in confusion. The corpse of the creature was gone, and so was the axe that Dan had used to kill it. There was a deep bloodstain on the floor, but nothing else remained of their formidable foe. 

“D-Do you think it’s still alive?” Dan asked shakily, a new fear settling in his chest. He couldn’t face that monster again. Not after what it had done to Arin. 

“No, the game’s just cleaning up after itself,” Arin answered, a look of concentration on his face. “But I’m certain there will be more of them. We need to look harder for resources.” 

“Okay,” Dan said, biting his lip nervously. “Now, can we please get out of here? I fucking hate this room.”


	6. Chapter 6

If no one had told him that he’d just been ripped apart by a ferocious and terrifying freak of nature, Arin would never have known. He felt the same as he had before, despite a brief lapse in memory. He recalled the creature moving quickly down the hall, and his hands acting on their own accord with the gun. He remembered pulling the trigger once, twice, three times, and then the beast was right in his face. After that, he could only remember waking up on the ground with Dan’s disheveled face above him. 

It had sent pure terror through Arin’s body to see Dan look so mortified and anguished. 

When Arin looked over at Dan, though, as they walked out of the dreaded armory, he could only see relief and apprehension on his friend’s face. The truth was, Arin was thankful he didn’t have to witness what Dan had gone through. Based on the blood on his shirt and covering Dan’s hands, it hadn’t been an easy sight to take in. It scared him to think that he had bled so much, enough for Dan to think he was dead. Maybe he had been. Arin couldn’t let that thought stick around too much. 

The walk through the hall was pleasant enough with no disruptions, but the moment of peace didn’t last for very long. As if they hadn’t dealt with enough already, when they stepped out from the path into the courtyard, it was night. 

The once-relaxing sunny sky had darkened, its black clouds swirling with the gentle breeze. The moon hung in the sky, tinted red, and cast a hazy glow over everything. Insects chirped faintly from the woods and leaves rustled against the stone barrier walls of the courtyard. 

Arin caught Dan’s nervous glance and all he could do was stare right back. “How...how long was I out?” 

“Not long enough for the day to end. We were only in the armory for a half hour, tops, and it was mid day when we came outside the first time. This is the game’s doing,” Dan speculated. 

Arin let this settle in as he scratched at the scruff on his chin. “Yeah. It’s setting an atmosphere.”

“Well, I don’t fucking appreciate it, stupid game,” Dan huffed, although his lips were curved up in just a hint of a smile. Arin smiled back and laughed a little as Dan continued, “This game sucks! It’s the worst.”

“Don’t say that, it’s going to hear you and get angry,” Arin teased, although there was seriousness behind his words. If the supernatural power behind the game was capable of putting them in a false reality, he was certain it could manipulate them further if it wanted to. Whatever _it_ was.

“Do you think someone’s watching us right now? Like, in some other dimension, someone’s actually playing as us?” Dan asked, the edge of fear returning to his voice. Arin shrugged, since there was really no way to answer that question. “It just doesn’t make any sense. I don’t want to think about it.”

Dan nodded in acceptance. “You’re right. It’ll just drive us crazy to try and figure out how we got here. We should focus on how we can get _out_.”

“Mm. Well, we still have two more paths to go, so I guess that’s where we head.” Arin looked at the tunnel straight across from them through the courtyard, and with Dan at his side, he made his way towards it. 

Small trees grew on the borders of the courtyard with a few dotted in the middle of the grass, and Arin eyed them as he walked by. Next to one tree was a very conspicuous looking crate, and Arin couldn’t help but smile. 

“Hey,” he said to catch Dan’s attention as he diverted off their straight path to approach the crate. With one hard swing of his leg, Arin pummeled his heel into the side of the box, splitting the crate and cracking it open. The boards fell to the ground, revealing a small pouch of health laying neatly among the rubble. Arin picked it up eagerly, turning to show Dan what he had found. 

“Oh! Arin, you’re so smart!” Dan said with genuine affection. 

Arin laughed breathily. “Thanks? Keep your eyes open for more of these, if you see any.”

“Sure thing.” 

Arin slid the pouch into his backpack, which had been emptied from their last rough encounter. All it carried now was the few notes they had found, so Arin was happy to restock their inventory with the more useful items. 

The two of them continued their path to the second tunnel hall, and as the dark looming entrance grew closer, anxiety began to build in Arin’s stomach. There could be more of those _things_ inside, and they were completely unarmed now. Arin still held the gun, dangerously tucked away into his pants, but it was basically useless without bullets. If they were attacked now, it would easily kill them. And there might not be more chances. 

Dan was feeling the same way, because both of them had stopped outside the hall hesitantly. The path was dark, but Arin could see the flickering of a torch or light further inside the walls. He exchanged a glance with his friend before they set off down the hall. It wasn’t like there were many other options. 

This tunnel was longer than Arin would have expected. Every few feet there was a source of light, but when he glanced behind him he couldn’t see the exit. The tunnel took them to the left a bit until it finally opened up into a long, rectangular room lined with stalls. 

Arin immediately recognized the room as the stables. The castle would have needed somewhere to store its animals, particularly any horses. The room was big and lofty with doors at the opposite end, and about ten stables on each side. The ceiling was high and made of wood, like the stables had been built separately and simply attached to the courtyard with the tunnel. 

The air smelled faintly of hay and another odor, something more musky and rancid. Arin doesn’t want to find out what it is. It doesn’t smell like the last monster they’d encountered, but it certainly didn’t seem promising either. 

To his left, Arin noticed Dan peering into one of the stables, a cautious hand resting on its wooden door. He felt a moment of alarm as Dan nudged open the stable door, but when nothing dangerous seemed to happen, Arin brushed off the feeling. How many times had they sworn to be careful, and Dan was just pushing open doors and roaming around freely? Arin bristled, but it wasn’t directed at Dan. 

He kept an eye on his friend while he went into the stall on the opposite wall, slowly pushing the door open and, when he saw nothing inside, backing out again. He turned to see if Dan had found anything, but was met with a similar confused look and a shrug. 

They made their way down the length of the room, stopping in their respective stalls. In the fourth or fifth one Arin had looked inside, he found a piece of paper resting neatly on the floor. 

“Got something,” he said, at the exact same moment that Dan popped up from one stall ahead on the other side, a box of ammunition held high in his hand. 

“Me too,” Dan answered, and they met in the middle to confer. 

Dan had a box of ammo, pretty straightforward, that he put in Arin’s backpack with the health from outside. Arin scanned over the note while Dan zipped up the bag. When Dan stepped around to face him again, Arin began to read aloud. 

_5/7/18-_

_As previously mentioned in my journal several months prior, [smudged] had been working on testing the unidentified metallic liquid from our rear well, which we have labeled the component. I have been working alongside him in his scientific endeavors and within the past fortnight we have perfected a concoction with incredible results that will alter the course of medicine for eternity. Our component is a most valuable resource, as when combined with [scratched out], it becomes a gelatin-like substance that has immense healing properties. However, the ratio of chemicals is crucial because the component is dangerous and sometimes lethal when not neutralized. Our creation, which we have named, simply, the health remedy, can heal any ailment or infliction in a matter of seconds. I have witnessed an entire limb regrown after application of the health remedy. It is an immediate cure to any wound, and it is only successful because it is made of the component. I was unable to replicate the remedy without the component being present._

_Furthermore, the health remedy is not permanent. Prolonged use results in a less efficient recovery until the remedy does not work at all. It should not be used repeatedly on a single recipient or it will become ineffective. The reason for this is unknown for now. I have been researching further, but my subjects always perish because the remedy loses its effect after numerous applications. I will update further soon._

_PS. Do not put the health remedy near flames. Highly flammable._

“That’s a lot of information,” Dan said in awe. He fidgeted with his hair as he seemed to wrap his brain around what Arin had just read. 

“Okay, so what can we take from this? This is clearly about the health we’ve been using,” Arin commented, staring down at the note in his hands. “It’s the backstory on it. It’s made with the component, which we read about in another note. The stuff from the well. We don’t know what that is exactly, though.” 

“Yeah,” Dan hummed. “This is just a warning. If we keep using the health it will eventually stop working. So we need to use it sparingly.” 

Arin nodded in agreement. “And, for fuck’s sake, we need to stay away from fire if we see any, or the pouch in my backpack will blow us both to pieces.” 

Dan laughed, abruptly, like that image was so unexpected and funny that he just couldn’t help himself. Arin raised an eyebrow, but the look on Dan’s face wasn’t humored amusement and Arin realized it was a nervous, coping laugh. 

“I already used it on you twice, Ar,” Dan said with wide eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know-”

“No, stop, it’s okay. Really, it’s okay. You had to,” Arin answered, raising his hands slightly as a sign of compromise. “Please, don’t blame yourself for anything.”

Dan, looking stricken, swallowed and nodded anyway. Arin had to give him credit for swallowing the doubt and fear so quickly so they could keep investigating. And just like that, they were back in the stalls, sweeping the ground for items. 

In just a few minutes Arin had covered the last half of his side of the stable, with no results except the note. Dan gave a quick shake of his head, indicating no, he hadn’t found anything else either. 

They had reached the other side of the room, where all that remained were the double doors. The rotting smell had grown stronger, Arin noticed, and it was coming from behind the closed doors. He gave Dan a look, asking permission to proceed, and Dan gave a curt nod in return. 

Arin pulled the doors open and was completely hit with the offensive, putrid smell of decaying flesh. He retched, turning to the side to gag before he could even see what was inside the dark room. Not that he needed to see to know what was inside. 

“Oh, fuck,” Dan choked, covering his mouth and nose with the crook of his elbow. It smelled really bad, like dead bodies had been baking in the heat for months. 

When Arin finally looked up and into the room, he realized that was exactly what had happened. 

The room was small, like a storage closet, but it was crowded with rotting corpses. Bodies lined the walls and were stacked on top of each other, thrown carelessly as if they were garbage. Flies circled overhead, buzzing and dancing from body to body. Arin’s eyes watered from the sheer strength of the stench. 

He heard the unmistakable sound of gagging, and turned in time to see Dan lean over and vomit. He tried not to watch as his friend threw up nothing but water and stomach bile, since they hadn’t eaten in a while, but he couldn’t avoid hearing the harsh sobs as Dan caught his breath. 

Dan wiped his mouth on his arm, avoiding his hands that still had dried blood on them, and then spoke up, “This is sick.”

Arin took another look at the bodies and with a jolt of fear he noticed most of them were missing their heads. He couldn’t tell how many there were, but most of them were mutilated in different ways. Whoever had done this was deranged, a sadist. 

“Arin,” Dan began, “there’s some items in here.” He raised a hand and pointed to a pouch of health squeezed between two bodies, and then to a box of ammo on the ground. Arin assumed Dan didn’t have it in him to get any closer to the corpses, so he reluctantly stepped forward, into the closet, and snatched up both items. He handed them to Dan so his friend could put them away for him, before backing out of the closet. 

On his way out, a piece of paper hanging on the inside of the door caught Arin’s eye. He grabbed that as well before backing up hastily and shutting the doors once more. 

Dan had a horrified look on his face, and Arin could feel his own disgust plastered across his as well. 

“That was a lot of people,” was all Arin could say. It came out less meaningful than he intended. He looked down at the note in his hands, then back up at Dan’s pale face before reading. 

_Fiends_

_On the subject of fiends. To eliminate a fiend, one must be precise and deliberate. These creatures are strong and deadly with the capability to kill in a single strike. They are not all the same in terms of morphological appearance but they all can be terminated in the same manner. The following is a recommended list for exterminating fiends._

_1\. Injury to the head or neck  
2\. Fire_

_No other method has been observed to successfully kill a fiend._

Arin didn’t need to ask what a fiend was. He was all too familiar with them by now. Dan seemed to understand as well, shifting uncomfortably on his feet. 

“They’re called fiends?” he mused, his brows furrowed. “What the hell are they, then?”

“We don’t know, yet,” Arin huffed. He stowed the note away. “At least it told us how to kill them.”

“Yeah. So we’ve got fiend monsters, strange liquid from the well, health goo, and dead bodies. How does this tie in the doctor?” 

“I mean, clearly something evil and supernatural is happening here,” Arin replied. “We’ve got the key elements, we just don’t know how they come together.”

Dan shook his head in frustration. “I fucking hate this.”

“I know. Me too.” It was all Arin could say. He knew nothing would help. 

***

When they were back in the courtyard, Arin loaded his gun with all the bullets they’d found so far. They took a few minutes to collect their thoughts in the one section of this area that seemed neutral. Dan stood off to the side, looking up at the dark sky while deep in thought. 

Arin had finished loading the gun, and caught himself watching the confusion on Dan’s face as his friend paced. _You’re staring_ , he thought, and then lowered his gaze back down to the gun as his cheeks flushed in embarrassment. 

“Arin?” Dan called lightly. “You ready?” 

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” he sighed dramatically for effect, earning a weak chuckle from Dan. 

They had one last branching corridor to investigate before they were out of places to look. Technically they hadn’t even approached the castle doors yet, but Arin already knew it would be locked. By process of elimination, that meant if there was a key, it must be down the last hall. If not a key, at least something to move the plot of the game along. 

Arin stood up from where he had crouched down, leaving his thoughts and worries right where he’d just sat, and followed Dan to the last path. 

It was dark, of course, much like the last hall, with the same dim lights spaced every few feet to provide visibility. They set off down the tunnel, which branched right - a mirror image of the hall to the stables. But unlike the last area, this new path broke into stairs that led down into the unknown. 

Arin really didn’t want to go any further, and judging by the hand on his arm, Dan didn’t either. He offered a gentle brush of his hand against Dan’s to reassure him, and then reached for his gun. 

They descended into darkness, side by side, their arms interlocked. Arin kept the gun tight in his hand but he can’t see just feet in front of him and it would be no help if something were to sneak up on them. As they hit the bottom of the stairs, Arin could hear a low moaning in the distance. He tightened his grip on Dan’s arm as they proceeded, engulfed by darkness. 

The sound began to increase in volume, and Arin thought it sounded like the low hum of a busy room, where hundreds of voices spoke over each other to be lost in the crowd. 

Eventually the hall stopped at a single wooden door, with torches burning on either side, giving them just enough light to see where they were. 

The hum was coming from behind the door, and Arin’s hands were sweating from his elevated heart rate. Dan slid his arm from Arin’s and pushed the door open. 

They were met with, unsurprisingly, another long room. Much like the stables, it was lined with stalls, but tall bars that reached the ceiling blocked each stall’s entrance. 

“The prison,” Dan breathed. 

Arin believed Dan was right. There were small cells that stretched on, side by side, locked with heavy looking iron bars. Arin peered into the cell right next to him, which was empty except for a bale of hay. There were mysterious dark stains on the stone floor and the room reeked.

This time, it was the familiar scent of ozone. 

“Oh, no, no, I can’t-” Dan began, his voice filling quickly with panic and his eyes widening as he realized what the prison held in store for them. 

Arin was terrified too, but they had two health pouches and plenty of ammo, and he wasn’t intending to let their last encounter with a fiend repeat itself. He was the one who’d been killed, but he could understand Dan’s reluctance.

“Dan, I need you to do this. I can’t do it without you.” Arin took Dan’s hand in his and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Dan looked like he was going to pass out. 

“Please, we have to,” he continued, begging with his eyes for Dan’s courage. To his relief, Dan nodded curtly, sucking in a shaky breath and turning his head towards the tunnel. 

They tried to open the first two cell but the bars were firmly locked, proving useless. The second set of cells were occupied, to Arin’s horror. Inside each one was a hulking mass of indiscernible features, a gooey black writhing mess huddled in the corner facing away from them. They were releasing different noises. One was the metallic scraping from the fiend that they’d met in the armory, and the other was letting out a gurgling noise as if it was drowning. 

The fiends were locked inside the cell and didn’t seem to notice as Arin and Dan crept down the hallway on the balls of their feet, muscles tensed and eyes alert. Almost every stall was occupied, filled with either a black, red, or gray slimy fiend. Some were bigger than others, and only one of them tried to swing at Arin through the bars, screaming in a way that sounded awfully like human shrieks. 

“It’s okay,” Arin said softly, for both himself and Dan. They weren’t sure where they were going, but it seemed like the monsters were out of reach and couldn’t harm them. 

The last few cells were empty, but still locked. They reached the end of the prison block and stopped, turning to look back at the way they had come. A few torches here and there provided dim light but it was flickering ominously and didn’t make Arin feel any more safe. 

“Right here,” Dan said from behind Arin, and he turned back around to face his friend. Hanging conspicuously on the wall was a large, shining key. It was so obvious that it would have been impossible to miss. 

Arin may not have been excellent at video games, but he knew a trap when he saw one. 

Dan recognized the threat too. He looked at Arin with pleading eyes. “Do we have any other choice?” he whispered. 

Arin wished he could put off the inevitable. He shook his head solemnly, his eyes fixed on the key. 

“I don’t think so.”

Dan had no answer to this and instead slowly reached up with a trembling hand to grab the key. He wrapped his slender fingers around it and carefully lifted it off the wall. Arin was so tense that he thought he might throw up. 

A few seconds passed with nothing, and for a moment Arin thought they were in the clear. Then came the creaking, grinding sound of the metal barred doors of the cells swinging open. Arin’s whole body went cold as he realized what this meant. 

“Stay behind me,” Arin said to Dan, who was weaponless. He only had time to glance back at his friend for a split second before the monsters were slinking out of their cells, screaming and moaning with their horrific and unnatural sounds. 

With no time to waste, Arin raised his gun and began firing. 

The first one went down easily, collapsing into a heap on the floor after a perfectly aimed headshot. Arin’s next shot was weaker, hitting one in the arm. It howled with rage. 

The hall was _full_. Arin tried to count as he fired over and over, his hands shaking and causing his shots to miss. There were at least ten of them, and in a matter of seconds they would be upon him. 

It was over before it had even begun. 

Time slowed down as Arin pulled the trigger again. Blood was rushing in his ears, combined with the deafening sound of the gunshots and the creatures wailing. Behind him, Arin heard Dan say something that sounded muffled and felt himself get pulled backwards a bit. 

Arin fired, fired, fired. Then the gun clicked and it was empty. He was out of bullets. The fiends kept coming, stumbling over each other in their frenzy. His heart was pounding so hard, his arms were going numb. 

Arin saw a hand sneak past his head, Dan’s hand, to grab a torch off the wall. Then Dan’s voice, yelling, “Arin, get DOWN!” 

He turned to Dan and watched with round eyes as his friend ripped open a packet of health with his teeth, put the torch to it, and then threw it hard into the swarm of fiends. 

Arin dropped to the floor, taking Dan with him, as the room lit up in fire with a loud roar. Flames went blasting in every direction, covering the monsters and slamming against the walls of the cells. The explosion knocked Arin against the wall as well, crushing Dan underneath him. He felt the intense heat of the fire as it burned the shrieking bodies of the fiends. 

Arin didn’t know how long he stayed huddled against the corner of the wall and the floor, Dan protected under his body, but when he looked up the room was blackened from smoke and small fires were smoldering over crumpled heaps of flesh. 

Gathering his wits, Arin pushed up with his arms to stand up, but Dan grabbed his forearm tightly to keep him in place. He looked down at his friend in surprise, inches away from Dan’s face. 

Dan’s lips were parted and the side of his face was darkened with ash, while the other side still had Arin’s dried blood from earlier. He stared back up at Arin with an equally entranced look and Arin could feel Dan’s small breaths against his cheek. They stayed like this for a few confusing moments before Dan let go and Arin stood up, picking up his handgun as he climbed to his feet. He adjusted the backpack on his shoulders, stowed the gun, and reached down to help hoist Danny up. 

“Are you hurt?” he asked with a shaky voice. 

“No, I’m okay. Are you?” 

“I’m fine. Dan, you’re fucking brilliant! You saved our lives,” Arin gaped, unable to hold back the grin that split on his face. “How did you think of that?!”

Dan’s face broke into a small smile as well. “I-I don’t know, I just saw the torch on the wall and I remembered the note, and -”

“You’re incredible,” Arin said, beaming like an idiot despite nearly dying for the third time. 

Dan seemed taken aback and his cheeks turned a lovely pink. “I’m just doing what I have to,” he said. “I was so scared, the idea just came to me. It all clicked into place so fast.”

Arin laughed lightly, more out of amazement and relief than because he thought anything was funny. 

“I told you I couldn't do it without you. Thank you.” 

Dan brushed some hair out of his face and smiled bashfully. “Yeah, I guess you were right.”

Arin’s gaze dropped to where Dan held the key in one hand, his other pulled protectively to his chest and curled in slightly. Arin’s brows furrowed and he reached out to take Dan’s free hand, pulling it out towards him with little resistance. Dan averted his eyes. 

His hand was burnt beyond recognition on the palm, charred into a crisp black with the skin splitting to reveal oozing blood. His wrist was burned as well, but not as badly. It must have been exposed directly to the fire when he threw the makeshift bomb. Dan’s face twitched with pain as Arin held his hand. 

“Dan-” Arin croaked, “you-you said you weren't hurt.”

“It’s not that bad,” Dan said through grit teeth, and it was the most blatant lie Arin had ever heard him say. 

Before Dan could try and stop him, Arin was reaching around into his backpack to pull out their last health pouch. 

Dan caught on immediately. “Ar, stop, we should save it for something serious!”

Arin ignored this protest and took the pouch in his hand, tearing it open with his teeth like Dan had done a few times already. “You keep looking after me, now let me take care of you,” he said with a tone of voice that indicated he wasn't open for negotiation. 

Dan nodded weakly, wincing as the gel was poured into his outstretched palm. Arin gently placed his hand underneath Dan’s, using only his thumb to rub the health into the damaged skin. Dan leaned forward until his head rested on Arin’s shoulder and closed his eyes. 

Without thinking, Arin pressed a comforting kiss into Dan’s hair, earning a soft hum in return. 

When the gel had been absorbed and Dan’s hand was dry and smooth again, Arin slowly pulled away from his friend. He let go of his hand and Dan brought it up to his face to look at it. As good as new, his skin was its normal peach color, unmarred. 

“There,” Arin said. 

Dan’s neck and cheeks were pink and he nodded in thanks. He glanced at the now open cell doors. “Maybe we should check for items and then get out of here before we suffocate?” 

Arin grinned slightly. “Yeah. Good plan.” He turned into the cell behind him and like they’d done in the stables, they quickly scoped out each cell for items. They went along the length of the room, backtracking their way out. When they met at the door to leave the prison block, Arin had just one box of ammunition. He loaded the gun while Dan approached, his hands full. 

“What’ve you got?” Arin asked, perking up. Dan tossed another box of ammo in Arin’s direction and he caught it with one hand. 

“I found a note too,” Dan said. 

“Read away?” Arin replied as he fit the rest of the bullets into his backpack. 

_7/12/18-_

_It has been roughly two months since my last journal regarding the component and the health remedy I created. We have continued our research thoroughly and have tested a new procedure, producing alarming results._

_We have begun applying the component directly to our subjects. This element works in strange ways. When it is simply administered to the subject, they perish almost immediately. However, if the subject is experiencing pain or physical trauma, the component does not kill them and instead rapidly increases the effects of the injury. This is quite the opposite of what I had hypothesized because the component has been proven to heal when it is combined with the right chemical agents._

_The further results are even more astonishing. After repeated exposure to the component along with increased physical trauma, the subjects begin to alter physiologically. It does not always happen the same and the results depend on the method of physical damage, but the subjects seem to lose all conscious thought, ability to reason, and the other features of human conscience. Their bodies also undergo a physical change that results in protrusions of bones, the shedding of skin, the reshaping of entire organs or limbs, and the growth of unnatural features. The subjects are almost entirely unrecognizable after the corruption. The process seems to be extremely painful and unpleasant._

_The resulting fiends, as we call them, are highly dangerous and seem to function based only on the instinct to kill, harm, or consume. We created the first fiend on 6/20/18- after two weeks of treatment on a young male subject and we have since created three more. We place them in the dungeons as they are too dangerous to be allowed elsewhere._

_I am not sure what these beasts are, but it is safe to say the component has consequences that have never been seen before on a man. I am increasingly fascinated with the corruption process and the component and I will continue to research and experiment until I am satisfied. I presently cannot explain what is happening to our subjects._

“Oh god,” Dan finished, a hand rising to cover his mouth. “T-those things, they were people once! They’re people!” 

Arin was stunned into a cold silence. He thought back to the grotesque monsters that roamed through the castle halls, their bodies disfigured and misshapen, their wide mouths with rows of razor sharp teeth, their haunting screams and moans, their blood-like smell. They had been people once. 

“These people, the doctor, they’re insane. They’re fucking - how could they do this?” 

Dan shook his head in disbelief. “They... kidnap and torture innocent people until they _corrupt_ into whatever the hell fiends are. In the name of science…Oh, this is worse than I thought.”

Arin put his head in his hand. “Do you remember the girl from the forest, the one _he_ killed? She looked like she’d been through hell. He was hurting her, trying to turn her into one of those things.” 

“And that’s what he wants to do to us. Arin, what happens if we lose the game?” 

Arin didn’t want to answer that question. “We’re not going to. So don’t think about it. We’re going to get out of here and maybe kill the doctor too if we can.” 

Suddenly Arin was hit with a strange feeling as he remembered none of this was even real. They were inside a game, a virtual reality, with no consequences stringing into the real world as long as they made it out. What would it matter if they killed the doctor? The game would simply reset. The people that he tortured and killed? They weren’t real either, just simulations of humans for the purpose of the game. Arin didn’t even know if they had feelings or emotions. Everything just felt so _real_ , and he couldn’t help but empathize with the victims, even if they meant nothing. But if Arin and Dan were here, solid flesh and blood, then maybe the people that suffered were too. And that dilemma would haunt Arin forever. 

“Hey, are you okay?” Dan asked softly, noticing the stricken look on Arin’s face. 

He swallowed thickly before replying, “yeah. I’m good.” Dan gave him a skeptical look but didn’t push further, passing the note to Arin for him to put away. 

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Arin changed the subject, sparing one last glance at the smoldering burnt bodies that he now recognized as victims, just like him and Dan. They never asked to be hurt like that, turned into vicious horrifying monsters. 

They climbed the stairs in solemn silence, and this time the darkness of the hall didn’t seem so frightening. They were still alive, still breathing, and the game was moving forward. The weight of everything they’d learned so far was heavy on Arin’s shoulders and conscience, but he knew he had to keep it together for the rest of the game, and for Dan’s sake. 

They walked through the courtyard, their eyes scanning, and stopped just short of the castle doors. Dan fished the shiny key out of his pocket. 

“All this time and we haven’t even gone inside the damn castle yet,” Dan huffed nervously. 

Arin knew nothing good awaited them inside the ornate doors. But with nothing else to do but keep going, they pushed the key into the lock.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for moderately graphic torture (and general creepiness) at the end of the chapter.

The past few hours felt like an endless cycle of opening new doors, following a set path into the unknown, facing horrors and pain, and then repeating again. Dan was growing tired of feeling the gnawing anxiety as a new door presented itself and he was forced to push it open and step inside. Over and over they pressed on aimlessly, surviving by the skin of their teeth, nearly losing each other to the script of the game. 

As Dan stepped into the castle for the first time, this sense of dread nearly swept him off his feet once more. The interior of the castle was everything he expected. 

It was dark, dimly lit with torches, aging poorly with cracking stone and rotting wood, and festering with black mold that grew on the walls and floors. They were standing at the edge of a long hallway, like the numerous other hallways they’d already braved. Dan wondered if the repetitive scenery was an effect of the game, if seeing the same maddening walls would drive someone to lose their wits and succumb to the doctor. Dan couldn’t grasp what the evil force behind the game wanted. Their souls? Their bodies? He shuddered lightly at the thought. 

The hall had two arching staircases, staggered in separate positions but appearing to lead to the same place upstairs. There were closed doors on either side of the hall leading to unknown locations. On the opposite side of where Dan stood was another conspicuous door, identical to the one he’d just entered the castle through. It was clearly something important. 

Dan met Arin’s gaze and saw that his friend was thinking the same thing. 

“The exit?” Dan breathed, looking to Arin for confirmation, and the other man nodded in agreement. 

“Yeah. That’s how we get out.” 

Dan couldn’t quell the nervous excitement that twisted his insides as he stared down the door that would lead to their freedom. He wasn’t sure how he knew where the door led simply from looking at it, but seeing it gave him a sense of hope. Perhaps he’d played enough games to know an objective when he saw one. 

“Well, I doubt it’ll be so easy that we can just walk out. Where do you wanna go first?” Arin asked. Dan gave a weak smile. 

“Whatever’s closest.” He pointed to the door to their immediate left and Arin headed in that direction, Dan at his heels. They walked into the first room, elbowing the door open and scanning the area for threats. 

It was a plain room with slight furnishings, and Dan wasn’t sure what exactly it had been used for. It seemed like it could have been a sitting room, because all it contained was an aged couch, a rotting wood table, and a large piano. Dan perked up as he heard a scoff from Arin. 

“Has there ever been a horror game without a piano?” he laughed, and Dan reciprocated with his own nervous chuckling. He eyed the piano wearily as if he expected it to jump at him and kept his distance while he circled the couch. 

The room appeared to be of no use, at least not yet, so Dan quietly exited once he was satisfied with his search. It didn’t take long for Arin to follow after double checking for anything Dan could have missed. 

“Where do you think the doctor is right now?” Arin asked out of the blue as they walked to the next door. Dan raised his eyebrows and gave a shrug. 

“I don’t know and I don’t want to find out.” He thought back to the brief interaction they’d had in the forest and the menacing look of the doctor as he put a bullet into the woman’s head. The man had almost seemed gleeful to end her life and slam the end of his gun into Dan and Arin’s temples. He didn’t want to run into him again, but it was certainly inevitable now that they were inside the castle.

“I think he’s watching us,” Arin said as he opened the new door routinely, one hand poised on his gun. 

Before Dan could answer, the wafting smell of blood hit his nose and his heart dropped as the door swung open to reveal another fiend circling the room, its oversized hands dragging on the floor. Its claws scraped the ground to make an eerie grating noise. 

Arin was on it faster than Dan could even process the scene, and the excruciatingly loud gunshots rang out in the silence of the castle. Dan turned away as the fiend shrieked and went down in a heap, its body spasming on the floor as thick black blood poured from its head. Arin had a cold look of determination in his gaze as he lowered his gun slowly. 

“You’re getting good at that,” Dan croaked. 

Arin took a deep breath and gave a hand gesture to usher Dan inside. He turned to reach into his backpack for the remaining bullets to reload while Dan cautiously entered this next room. 

There was another sofa, a big cabinet-like shelving unit, and the remains of a wooden table. Another sitting room, Dan speculated. He stepped over the body of the fallen fiend, heat radiating from its corpse, and tried not to gag. He heard the click of the gun as Arin finished reloading and stepped in behind him. 

“There’s a note,” Arin commented, pointing to the cabinet. Dan followed his gaze from over by the sofa and nodded. 

There was the sound of drawers opening and then the rustle of paper as Arin investigated the shelves. Dan looked on the floor behind the small sofa, but there was nothing to be seen. 

“What’s it say?”

_8/16/19--_

_I fear that my bloodline is coming to an end. There is no one left, I am alone in my research and projects. There is no one to continue what my family has accomplished for generations at this marvelous castle. When my great grandfather ordered the construction of this palace and discovered the secrets of the component, he may have altered the course of history forever if not for the rejection and ostracization that society brought upon him for his “cruelty”. Foolish! They were ignorant, blind to the greatness that he could have bestowed upon modern medicine. Now I am left with his legacy and no one to share it with._

_I long for the touch of a companion. I am at my prime to raise a child who could succeed me in preserving the history of my family. Alas I am alone, isolated, and lacking a suitable mate. It may just be the end of Hollow Castle._

_Perhaps I can... with one of my subjects. I will have to keep an eye out for healthy, young females who may be able to bear my progeny._

_In the meantime I will try to relieve my desires with any other subjects._

Dan gave a full-body shudder as Arin finished reading. He was thoroughly creeped out and quite disgusted by the implications of it all. 

“The doctor wrote that, right?” Dan asked. “It mentions the other guy, who wrote the stuff about the fiends and the health. His grandfather, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Arin confirmed. “The doctor we know wrote this one. He’s the last of his family.”

“At least we know there’s no one else here except him and those creatures,” Dan replied. “I’d hate to be caught off guard by some crazy assistants or something.” 

“Mhm. Unless he’s got any more victims held somewhere.” 

“I think it’s just us.” 

Arin stowed the note in his backpack and turned to leave so Dan shuffled over quickly to follow him. As he stepped out of the doorway Arin stopped stiffly, held out his arm to prevent Dan from going any further, and backed up until they were in the room again. 

“Speak of the devil,” Arin breathed, before Dan had time to question the strange movement. 

Confused, Dan leaned forward to peer out into the hallway, and his heart caught in his throat. Walking through the corridor was the doctor himself, his rifle slung over his shoulder, whistling a tune lazily as he made his way to the stairs. 

“What is he doing here?!” Dan breathed into Arin’s ear. 

Arin turned his head but kept his eyes locked on the doctor. “I think he heard my gunshots… He must be looking for us.” 

Dan watched as the strange man poked his head into the room they had just been in previously, before turning to waltz up the stairs cheerily. He ascended and rounded the corner, disappearing down the upstairs hallway. 

“He’s not looking very hard,” Dan said, his brows furrowed. Now they would have to be on guard. “What do you think will happen if he sees us?”

“He’ll fucking kill us, or worse, he’ll turn us into one of the fiends. Either way, we’ll lose. He’s just toying with us right now. He could have easily looked into this room too, but he didn’t. He wants to draw it out.”

“Maybe he’s just dumb,” Dan suggested in all seriousness. Arin stifled a laugh. 

When they were certain that the coast was clear they entered the hallway once again and walked diagonally to the next door, which was under the first staircase. There was a metal plate on the door with “LAB” engraved into it. 

“I think it’s the lab,” Arin said with a grin. Dan shook his head in exasperation and gave his friend a small playful shove. Dan couldn’t imagine how much courage it took to be making jokes right now. 

Arin leaned forward and took the handle of the door, turning it to no avail. It was locked. 

“This must be where we need to go, then,” Dan suggested, noticing the keyhole above the handle. “We’ll have to keep looking.” 

Arin gave a loud sigh and ran his hand through his smooth hair. “Yep. Back to it.” 

\---

They found the library next. It was on the bottom floor, two thirds of the way down the hall, on the left. It had pretty double doors with wood engravings that were already swung wide open, inviting them to enter. 

The room was large and the smell of dusty worn books filled the air. All the walls were lined with shelves piled high with books and some extra shelves stuck out to make aisles. There were desks and tables with open books strewn about, and an old chandelier hanging from the ceiling, collecting cobwebs. Some books had been tossed to the floor and individual papers were scattered everywhere. 

It was a picturesque messy library. 

In the first aisle, Dan found a pouch of health. He tossed it to Arin while the other man rummaged through piles of books. They swept the room quickly and efficiently but with their eyes wide, on high alert. Dan felt like a squirrel scurrying to find food with the constant pressure of hawks, wolves, or snakes weighing over him. His muscles were tense. 

Dan scanned over the books as he searched the room, but most of them were in other languages or looked completely insignificant. It wasn’t until he left the shelves and approached the desks that he saw something of any value. 

A large black book rested on the table with gold lettering in a language Dan couldn’t read. It was the only thing on the desk and stood out like a sore thumb. Dan went over to it, avoiding stepping on any of the books on the floor, and very hesitantly opened it to the first page. He didn’t want to trigger any traps by opening the book, but when the room remained silent and unchanged he flipped through a few more pages. 

On the page he opened to was a very old looking photo. It was colorless but browned with age and pictured a young man strapped to a chair. He was average sized and looked healthy, but his wrists, torso, and legs were bound to his seat. 

The photo below was more gruesome. It featured the same man, but it must have been taken weeks later because he had lost so much weight that his bones were protruding. His hair was outgrown and messy, and his face was swollen with bruises. Blood trickled across his face and mysterious dark liquid covered the floor. He was in the same chair but his body was twisted as if he had been thrashing. 

“Arin,” Dan called fearfully, “I think you should see this.” 

Arin appeared next to Dan, a note in his hand. He frowned and sucked in a breath of air when he saw the photo. 

“What is this?” 

“I don’t know. It looks like some of the victims.” 

Dan flipped to the next page, which had only one image. Whatever it was, the man in the previous photos was gone. This figure’s limbs had been lengthened disproportionately, its jaw was hanging open with long oversized teeth, and its skin was covered in a white slimy sheen. 

“What the fuck, what is that?” he repeated. 

“It’s a fiend. Maybe the first one.” 

The following pages contained similar pictures. For each victim it was often three photos: the initial photo of their normal bodies, a photo of their torture, and the final image- the horrific creature they had become. Each fiend was slightly different in size, shape, and color, but they all looked absolutely tormented and _wrong_. 

As Dan turned the pages the photos kept coming, growing more recent. The pictures increased in quality until Dan realized he was looking at detailed color photos. He stopped on the image of a very familiar girl. 

The one from the forest. 

She was curled on the floor of a cell, wearing a silky white gown, tears streaming down her face. The next photo was more like her state had been when Dan saw her. Quickly, he shut the book. 

“I can’t keep looking, Ar,” he said shakily. The images were too graphic, too real looking to be a video game. Dan’s stomach turned inside him, threatening to empty itself of nothing but bile. 

“It’s okay,” Arin said comfortingly. His eyes were fixed on where the book had been open, a slight glaze to them. “Just keep going. We can’t stop.” 

Dan nodded in terrified agreement. He eyed the paper in Arin’s hands and his friend seemed to catch the hint. 

_4/28/19--_

_As my father and his parents did before him, I’ve continued to work with the component and the health remedy throughout my lifespan. While I’ve always found the best results to come from unwilling subjects, I also have made the ultimate sacrifice as a scientist. I have tested on myself on many occasions, putting myself and everything I have worked for at risk for the sake of knowledge. However, I believe I have done this one too many times._

_While I have never applied the component to myself in its raw form, for fear of entering the corruption process, I have indeed used the health remedy many times. Today, after mishandling some of my equipment, I gained a deep gash on the back of my hand that I attempted to treat with the health remedy. It did not work. This leads me to conclude that I have been overexposed to it and now I am resistant to its effects. This is unfortunate, as I can no longer use the health remedy to treat my own afflictions, but I can still use it in my studies. This simply means I must find more subjects rather than making myself an active participant in my own experiments._

The implications of what Arin had read settled into Dan and his eyes widened. 

“Ar, do you know what this means? The health doesn’t work on him anymore. If we hurt him, he can’t heal himself. That’s how we stop him.” 

Arin’s eyes burned with fire and determination. “You’re right. This is really important. Now we know we can kill him.” 

“So let me get this straight,” Dan began, rubbing at his forehead in thought. He knew all the information, he just needed to organize it in his brain. “We have the mad scientist, the doctor, performing experiments on victims that he kidnaps. After they are tortured enough and given the component, whatever that may be, they corrupt into fiends. But the component was also mixed with something else to make the health, b-but even the health stops working if you use it too much.” Dan looked up at Arin. “This is too much, it’s too complicated.”

Arin had a look of concentration on his face. “No, I think you got it. That’s everything. That’s what we’re working with.” He stashed the note in his backpack amongst the others, all of them pieces of the puzzle that would lead to their freedom. 

“So why don’t we shoot him?” Dan asked. Arin had a handgun, the doctor had a rifle. In Dan’s mind the odds were plausible. “It would just take one shot. He’s immune to the health, you’re not.” 

Arin seemed to think about this. “I guess there’s no reason why not. But, if this really is a video game, it’s probably scripted for a boss battle at the end. I don’t think we could take him out earlier. I’ll try, though.” 

Dan nodded in affirmation. He believed in Arin completely. If anyone could do this, it would be Arin. 

His friend had walked back over to where he’d been looking before, so Dan followed to see what still held Arin’s interest. Around the corner of a bookshelf, a small metal box rested on a table. Written on a piece of tape that had been stuck to the top was “Lab Key”. 

“That last note was on top of this safe,” Arin said. He leaned in to inspect the keypad, which revealed none of its secrets. 

“I suppose we’ll need the password,” Dan huffed. Arin gave him a weak shrug. 

“Great. Just what we need. More things to find.” 

They left the library after that, creeping cautiously to the doorway. They wanted to be a bit more careful now that they knew the doctor was here with them. Sure enough, as they glanced into the hall, the man himself was circling the upstairs balcony, pacing back and forth between the two sets of stairs like he was a castle guard. His rifle was in hand. 

“Shit, what is he doing?” Dan whispered, watching from behind the library door. Arin studied him for a minute before crouching down and slipping out into the hall. 

“Ar, what are _you_ doing?” Dan repeated, baffled and horrified. “Get back here?!”

Arin put his finger to his lips and made a hand signal for Dan to follow. Reluctantly, Dan crouched as well, hearing his knees creak in protest as he made his way to Arin’s side. 

In a hushed voice that Dan almost missed, Arin said, “He won’t see us if we’re quiet and stay low.” Suddenly Dan understood what kind of situation this was, and he nodded. They were supposed to sneak by, it was part of the game. 

The two of them walked slowly, crouched, to the next door across the hall. Dan’s heart was pounding so hard in his chest that he thought the doctor would look directly at them. To his relief, though, they crossed the room in just under two minutes and as far as Dan could tell they hadn’t been detected. 

Just as he hurried into the next room, he saw the doctor start heading down the stairs. 

Dan stood and reached for Arin. “He’s coming,” he said through the lump that had formed in his throat. Arin quickly shut the door to the room so he could speak freely. 

“It’s okay, he’s probably just making his rounds. We’re fine,” he said, but Dan didn’t think he sounded so certain. 

Arin pulled away to look around the room. It was large and spacious with a few desks and chairs, and on the same wall as the door they had come in was another door. 

Dan felt a tug of anxiety as he looked between the doors. The room had two entrances, and one of them was open. Something felt wrong. 

“Arin?” Dan began, unable to form the words to describe how he was feeling. It was like an impending sense of cold dread. 

His friend looked at him, concerned, and all Dan could do was point to the other door. Arin set off in that direction to investigate, but Dan found that he could not move. He was frozen with unexplainable fear and he idled between the two doors, glancing back and forth nervously. 

As Arin approached the other door, a large figure stepped into the room, cutting him off. Arin scrambled to a stop and was immediately backing up towards Dan as the figure, the doctor, began to close in on them. 

Dan’s chest seized with terror as his gut feeling was proven right. 

“Oh, look who it is! You’re still here? That’s wonderful. I am so pleased that you two would like to participate in my experiments.” The doctor’s voice was cruel, mocking them as he approached. His face was twisted into a menacing smirk. 

Arin whipped around and began running towards Dan. 

“GO!” he called, and Dan wasted no time in turning to run as well. He swung the door open and entered the hall, Arin at his heels. They closed the door behind them to buy some time. 

“Fuck, where do we go?” Arin gasped, and Dan shook his head with panic. He had no idea where they could hide. He spent about three seconds looking around before he took off down the hall, running for the sake of getting away. Arin was at his side. 

Dan could hear the doctor slamming the door open and then a third set of footsteps was echoing through the hall. When they got close to the main exit door they’d seen earlier, the hall broke off into two separate directions. Dan swerved left and Arin stumbled along with him as they raced through the new corridor. 

Arin was checking doors as they ran, jiggling the handles to locked rooms that served them no use. 

As they rounded another corner, heading right, one of the doors opened. Arin skidded to a stop, urgently waving Dan down. Dan stopped as well, gasping for breath, turning to look behind him at where Arin had found a tiny broom closet to slide into. He was calling Dan over, waving with quick hand motions. 

Dan hesitated. He could see clearly from where he stood that he wasn’t going to fit into the closet with Arin, even if they smashed together. 

Arin seemed to realize what Dan was thinking and his face paled. Both of them looked as they heard the doctor calling, his voice growing louder. Dan couldn’t make out what he was saying. 

Then there was movement at the corner of the hall as the doctor rounded the corner, and Arin was just pulling the door to the closet shut. Dan stood there like a deer in headlights as the doctor locked eyes with him and grinned again. 

“There you are,” he purred. 

Dan took off again, the sound of feet hitting the floor close behind him. He was guided by blind fear and adrenaline, darting around more corners and through seemingly endless halls, but in his weakened state he was no match for the doctor. 

Strong arms wrapped around his shoulders and pulled him backwards, forcing a scream from Dan’s throat. He thrashed in the doctor’s grip, slamming an elbow back and gritting his teeth as it collided with something hard. 

The doctor made a noise of pain or anger, and then Dan was being thrown roughly to the ground. He hit the floor with his knees and caught himself with his hands, but then a heavy weight was bearing down on him and he was forced to his stomach, flat against the floor. All the air was knocked out of his lungs and he couldn’t speak, his voice coming out in raspy gasps as he tried to protest. 

“Stop fighting me,” the doctor growled with irritation, “or I’ll hurt you worse.” 

Dan felt something prick the side of his neck and he writhed weakly, crushed underneath the other man’s weight. He couldn’t do anything as the needle plunged into his skin, sending a tingling numbness through his whole body. His vision blurred and he gasped for breath that wouldn’t come until everything went black. 

\---

“- by that point you’ll have lost conscious thought already, but-” 

Dan’s head was spinning. His body felt heavy and useless as he came to, his head lolling to the side. He groaned. He could faintly hear a voice, or voices, coming in and out of focus as his vision swayed between blurry and doubled. He blinked once, twice, three times before his eyes adjusted enough for him to make out where he was. 

“-my favorite part, actually, but you’re not going to like it-” 

Then suddenly he was awake, completely, and Dan’s body spasmed with the effort of coming back to consciousness. He strained, still unable to move, and to his absolute horror he realized he was splayed out against a table, tied down with restraints across his body. 

The fear was so dizzying and nauseating that Dan drifted back into darkness for a second before an amused voice was bringing him back to awareness. 

“Oh, you’re awake. Perfect. I thought you might have died.” 

Dan could only whimper, at first, as he looked around. The doctor stood above him, hands planted on the table Dan was tied to as he leaned over his captive. He was in a room he didn’t recognize, under a fluorescent light that cast an eerie green glow across the walls. The room smelled of blood and disinfectant, and wire racks lined the walls with tools and scientific equipment that Dan couldn’t name. 

“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked, his eyes gleaming. Something dark swam beneath the surface. 

Dan tugged at his wrists as his heart rate picked up again, jackhammering his ribs. “Please, let me go,” he begged. He knew what was coming, he’d read the notes and seen the pictures. 

The doctor chuckled lightly, turning his back to fiddle with a rolling cart he had brought over. When he turned back towards Dan, the small scalpel in his hand flickered under the bright light. 

Dan’s stomach dropped to his feet. It didn’t look like there was a way out of this. Was he going to die? 

“Now, there’s a new theory I want to test,” the doctor began, inspecting the scalpel for a few moments before setting it back down on the cart. “You see, I’ve always created fiends by physically hurting the person I want to corrupt. However, I’ve never had two subjects like you and your friend before. Do you know why? Everyone I’ve ever caught was a loner, with no one to care about them when they’re gone. But you, you have someone special here in this castle with you. I wonder what pain he would feel when he sees what I am going to do to you. When I make him watch.” The doctor paused, licking his lips as he held up a round saw for Dan to see. 

Dan’s insides twisted with icy fear and dread. He shook his head miserably. “No, no, you don’t have to do this. Just let us go. I just want to go home.” 

The doctor eyed him with curiosity. “Do you think his anguish will be enough to corrupt him, when I force the component down his throat? I’ve always used physical pain, but I’ve never seen what kind of beast emotional pain can create.” 

Dan could barely breathe. He was on the verge of hyperventilating, letting out shallow panicked gasps. 

The doctor’s eyes had glazed over with a bloodlust that made Dan ill. He struggled again to no avail, tilting his head back in defeat and despair. 

The doctor placed his hand on Dan’s thigh and Dan flinched, eyes widening. The other man squeezed gently before running his hand up to Dan’s chest and touching his scruffy jaw, turning it to the side. 

“Don’t,” Dan warned, but there was nothing behind his threat except fear. 

“How should I start?” the doctor mused, running his gaze up and down Dan’s trembling body. He was eager, far too eager, Dan thought as he stared into the cold depth of the doctor’s eyes. 

Then his captor was leaning in close, his mouth by Dan’s neck, and Dan shuddered with disgust as the doctor’s tongue slid across his skin, stopping right over his jugular to bite gently. Something akin to a sob slipped past Dan’s lips and he clenched his eyes shut. 

But the doctor was pulling back, seemingly flustered. “Pardon me,” he said, out of breath. “I can’t help myself sometimes.” He ran a hand through his dark hair with embarrassment and turned back to his tray of items. Dan couldn't see anything except the doctor’s turned back, but he could hear the sound of metal tapping as the doctor moved his tools around. 

There was nothing Dan could do except wait. 

“You know, I think I’ll just start simple,” the doctor decided, quickly turning back around with empty hands. With no hesitation he leaned over Dan’s body and took his hand in his own, flattening it against the table. Dan felt strong fingers wrap around one of his own - his pointer finger. 

Then the doctor was applying pressure, bending the digit backwards, and frantic panic stabbed through Dan’s chest. There was nothing he could do. 

Sharp pain accompanied the crack of bone as Dan’s finger broke, and he screamed with misery. His chest heaved and he struggled weakly against his bonds. 

The doctor was smirking, satisfied, and reached for the next finger. Dan didn't even have time to protest before his middle finger was given the same treatment, bent backwards until it broke. He screamed, again. 

The pain built with each finger that the doctor snapped remorselessly. By the time his whole hand was broken, fingers left mangled, Dan was crying hard. 

“Stop, stop it, please,” he had begged, but the doctor only responded by squeezing Dan’s hand punishingly, ripping another wail of agony from the singer’s throat. 

While Dan’s tears ran down his cheeks and his pained whimpers filled the room, the doctor fiddled with something off to the side. He turned around again when he was ready, armed with an electric drill. Dan’s body ran cold. 

When the sound of whirring hit Dan’s ears he blacked out. 

The merciful unconsciousness did not last, however, and Dan felt himself fade in and out as the doctor tormented his body. The drill’s shrill sound was dulled and muffled, and the pain was just a muted fire, but it was all over. He was engulfed in pain. 

His throat was hoarse and dry but he couldn't hear his own screams anymore. He didn't even know what was happening to him. 

The torture went on for seemingly forever in Dan’s dreamlike state, until suddenly he was coming back to full awareness. He blinked wearily as his eyes adjusted and he saw the doctor spreading green tinted gel all over Dan’s body. The stench of blood - his own blood - hit his nose all at once. He moaned miserably. 

“Excellent. You’re doing wonderful,” the doctor said, coating Dan’s skin with the health. As its healing properties sunk into his body, Dan’s consciousness returned and the pain faded until it was gone completely. His fingers twitched and he looked over to see his hand perfectly unharmed. He tentatively wiggled his fingers and sure enough they moved easily and painlessly. 

“Wh-what are you doing to me?” Dan mumbled.

The doctor hummed as he poured something cold - water? - over Dan’s figure, and then a cloth was wiping away the blood and grime that stuck to his skin. Dan broke out in uncontrollable shivers from the chilly water. 

After a few minutes, Dan felt clean and completely unhurt, if not a little cold, disoriented, and still absolutely terrified. The doctor gave a firm pat to Dan’s side. 

“Great.” He leaned over to write something down on a clipboard set on his cart, and when he was done he faced Dan again with a sadistic, knowing grin stuck on his face. 

“Only five more rounds to go,” he said, leaning in once again to take Dan’s hand. 

Dan was screaming before the doctor even touched him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry Dan :(


	8. Chapter 8

Regret. 

That was the first thing Arin felt as he slid the closet door shut, hiding himself in the darkness while Dan stood alone in the hall, helpless. He watched through the wooden slats in the door as Dan ran off, the doctor at his heels, and then the two men disappeared around the corner. 

Arin was left alone, squished against brooms and stunned by his own actions. He was so shocked at everything that had just happened that he froze for a few minutes, staring with unfocused eyes. What had he done? 

“Fuck!” he spat as his senses came back to him and he shoved the door open before moving fast down the hall where Dan had gone. How could he have abandoned his best friend like that? 

His thoughts tumbled through his head as he jogged through the maze-like halls. He’d been so selfish and now Dan was gone. The realization sent cold dread into his blood. He’d fought so hard to keep Dan safe through everything, and in the moment his friend needed him most Arin had failed him. He was nauseous with the thought. 

A dark stain on the floor caught Arin’s eye as he passed through yet another hall, and he slowed to a stop to inspect it. It was blood. Fresh blood. 

As he looked down, Arin also noticed his gun, resting exactly where he had left it tucked into his pants. 

The self-hatred came flooding through him again and Arin swore, turning to slam his fist into the wall. He barely felt the accompanying pain that rocketed up through his knuckles to his wrist. He deserved it. If the doctor had caught Dan, this small pain would be nothing compared to what Dan would experience. 

He hadn’t even touched his weapon. He could have pulled the gun and fired at the doctor, and it probably would have only taken one hit. He had the opportunity and he missed it. Why hadn’t he thought to grab the gun? Dan had been relying on him and he couldn’t even think to fight back. 

Arin turned back to the bloodstain and took a heavy breath. He needed to keep his cool if he was going to find Dan. He thought back to everything they had learned in the library, struggling to keep his composure. 

Arin wanted to cry. He could feel everything built up in his chest, threatening to spill right out his throat, but he swallowed it down with a few shuddering breaths. He would find Dan, and everything would be okay. He needed to concentrate and stop panicking. 

There was a laboratory door under the stairs. He was almost certain that is where the doctor would have taken Dan. The key to the lab was in a safe in the library. Arin needed the code to the safe. Find the code. That was his first step. 

Wasting no more time, Arin began walking down the hall he had spotted the bloodstain in. He moved quickly, testing door handles as he went, but most of them were locked and those that were open were empty or closets, sometimes both. 

He veered right after walking for a few minutes, and then with a start he realized he was back in the big main hall of the castle. He looked to his right and sure enough there sat the main doors that would lead to his freedom. Arin’s brows furrowed as he took it all in, and he rubbed his head before making his way to the stairs. That was the only place they hadn’t been to yet, since the doctor had been guarding it earlier. 

Now the doctor would be preoccupied, Arin thought as his stomach churned. 

He climbed the stairs and this time his hand stayed on his gun the entire time. He would not hesitate to fire if anything came his way. Once he reached the upper floor, Arin broke left. There really was no method to his searching as long as he did it quickly. He wanted to get to Dan as fast as possible before the doctor did anything permanent. 

Arin tried to block the thoughts from his head, but they came rushing in so mercilessly that he couldn’t avoid them. Guilt, shame, anger, fear. They were so overpowering that Arin had to put his free hand up on the wall to keep himself steady. Dan was going to be hurt and it was Arin’s fault. 

He should have let Dan hide in the closet and allowed himself to be taken instead. He should have reached for his gun. He shouldn’t have run, should have faced the doctor and the rifle without fear. He should have protected Danny at all costs. 

Arin miserably shoved open a door to one of the rooms upstairs and was surprised to find a toilet and sink. It clearly was not part of the original castle and had been added in later. He stepped into the small room, peering down the sink and into the toilet, which was overflowed with murky brown water. Typical. He half expected to find a crying fetus in the sink. 

The bathroom was fruitless except for one burnt piece of paper near the toilet. Arin picked it up. 

_Reminder - take subject 168’s remains to dump in the west courtyard well._

Arin grimaced as he read this. The doctor was dumping bodies in the well, contaminating his own water supply? 

He dropped the note back on the floor rather than taking it with him and backed out of the bathroom. This paper didn’t tell him much of anything important, but the number of the victim rang in his head. Subject 168. How many people had been tortured here over the years? 

Arin brushed off the nagging reminder in his mind that he was only the player in a game that wasn’t real, until a terrible thought popped into his head. The victims weren’t real, unless...they were? He hadn’t considered the idea yet, but now that he thought of it he could feel his skin grow clammy. 

The victims could have been other players who hadn’t made it out alive. 

Arin shuddered and he hoped to whatever god might be out there that it was just a passing thought and not the truth. If it was, the implications were scarier than Arin could have imagined. The game could be so difficult that no one can escape and instead are condemned to a fate of suffering forever, trapped in a digital reality. The woman he had seen in the forest, at the very beginning, could have been the last person to play the game. She could have had a family, a life, a home, outside of this hell. 

“No, you’re losing it,” Arin said to himself, shaking his head as if it would jostle the thought right out of his brain. “There’s no proof of that.” He realized if anyone was watching him he would appear mad, but that was the last thing he was concerned about right now. 

“Find Dan. Just find Dan,” he breathed, summoning all of his strength into focusing on the hall in front of him. He stepped away from the bathroom door and went forward. 

The upstairs was mainly ruins, Arin discovered as he progressed. There were plenty of trashed rooms with dirty piles of rotting furniture as well as some other more alarming discoveries. Some of the rooms, Arin noticed, were empty except for small cots, like prison cells. The heavy bolts on the doors didn’t go unnoticed either. 

He was walking through the quarters where the doctor kept his prisoners. 

In one particular room, Arin found scratches on the wall deeper than human fingers could have inflicted. He flinched as he ran his own hand along them, feeling the stone carved away like clay. 

“What the fuck,” he breathed. At this moment, something loud clattered from down the hall and Arin jumped, instantly reaching for his gun. He would not be caught off guard. 

Deciding to investigate rather than be trapped if someone were to come after him, Arin stepped into the hallway with his weapon raised. The hall was of course empty, void of threats. Huffing, Arin turned to the last room. 

This one had a little more to offer. Inside was a large bed pressed against the wall and a heavy wooden desk across from it. Papers lay scattered across the desk and Arin’s heart jumped in his chest. The password. 

He quickly approached the table, eyeing the bed with suspicion as he walked. The sheets and blankets were thrown about like they had been slept in recently, and in Arin’s mind he pieced together that he was standing in the doctor’s bedroom. 

He had to be in the right place, then. He eagerly picked up one of the notes on the desk and raked his eyes over it. It was handwritten in red and the ink was smeared across the page. It looked like it had been written in a haste, as the writing was slanted and scrawling. 

_Hell. It’s from hell._

_Hell is real and from its sickening rivers of blood comes that shit. Silver like liquid metal, so tempting. So powerful. Raw. Raw. Raw. Pain. Sin._

_From hell. Hell. The rivers of hell. Drink it like molten wine and SUFFER._

_Straight to hell. The well, a straight pipeline to the rivers of hell. It comes from the rivers of hell._

_HELL. IT COMES FROM HELL._

Arin set the paper down nervously, glancing around as if reading this would trigger something bad. The last few lines were illegible and Arin hadn’t even been able to read them. It was mad ranting by someone out of their right mind. It was pure nonsense. 

Arin ran a hand through his hair as the disappointment hit. It wasn’t the password, but it was still important, even if Arin couldn’t determine how reliable the information was. He opted not to take the note with him because he had a creeping suspicion that it wasn’t written in ink. 

As the unsettling feeling from reading the note faded, Arin’s eyes passed over a photo that was nearly covered with other papers. He grabbed it curiously with his thumb and forefinger and pulled it up to inspect it. 

The picture looked old and worn, like it had been taken years ago, but Arin clearly recognized the man in the photo. It was the doctor, standing tall in a black suit next to another man. The two of them had an arm wrapped around each other like any casual friendly photo. Arin frowned and looked closer, but he couldn’t make out the features of the other man. The photo was too dark in all the right places. 

This didn’t really set off any alarm bells for Arin, but he slipped it into his backpack anyway. If it was valuable enough for the doctor to keep it in his room, then Arin figured it was important. 

He spent a few more minutes scouring the rest of the room to no avail, and when he was satisfied that he’d found everything useful he took off back down the hall. He passed the staircase and took the opposite route, to the right side of the upper floor. 

He was met with more of the same as he scoped out the right hallway. He was growing increasingly frustrated as he passed more empty prison-rooms with the usual blood stains and dirty torn sheets. 

However, what Arin was not expecting as he threw open yet another door was for a long limbed white creature to be standing in the room. The fiend turned around at the sound of the door hitting the wall and it opened its wide mouth to reveal several sets of sharp teeth. Arin shrieked and stumbled backwards, retching as the ozone scent filled his lungs. He fumbled for his gun and pulled it as fast as he could as his back collided with the wall behind him. 

The fiend crawled towards him like a spider and Arin screamed as he fired his gun a bit recklessly. His hands were trembling and he missed the first few shots, but on his fourth or fifth round hit the fiend in the shoulder. 

The beast howled with rage and stopped for a moment, clutching at the wound with its clawed hands. Black liquid poured from the bullet hole and the fiend looked up with its dark eyes and met Arin’s gaze. Arin felt his blood turn to ice as the fiend looked directly at him, as if it was reaching directly into his soul. 

Then, another clattering noise from down the hall shattered the trance and the moment was over as quickly as it happened. The fiend jerked its head to the source of the sound and Arin took the moment to fire the final shot into its skull. Its body crumpled to the floor and Arin gasped for breath, his free hand placed over his chest. 

“Fuck, oh, fuck,” he panted. He was dripping with sweat but his body felt cold. The fiend had looked _right_ at him. He didn’t know what to make of this. At this point, he was beyond all terror and couldn’t even fathom what any of this meant. It had made meaningful eye contact, and Arin shot it right in the head. 

When he felt like he could breathe again, Arin slowly crept to the last room, which was identical to the doctor’s room on the left side. The lingering shock worked like a filter and Arin almost disregarded the bed against the wall with its neatly made sheets and blankets. He felt like he was losing his mind as he looked at the desk against the wall, just like he had already seen. Had he come back to the same room?

Was the upstairs some kind of looping portal, an endless hallway of repeating rooms? It would almost be plausible. But when Arin approached the desk, he realized the papers were different. In fact, this desk only had a lamp and one paper. 

Arin picked it up and couldn’t help but grin. 

_Safe Code: 8722_

He had it. All he needed to do now was grab the key to the lab and he was on his way to finding Dan, and one step closer to escaping. The loneliness had really settled in while Arin was exploring the upstairs and he ached with how much he missed just having Dan’s presence around him. He tried not to dwell on the thoughts of what was happening to Dan right now and instead focused his energy on his next task. 

Wasting no more time, Arin swiveled around towards the door. 

He felt his organs shrivel in his body as he nearly crashed into the doctor himself, who was standing ominously and threateningly in the doorway. Arin screamed again and kicked himself up onto the bed to get away from the man. 

The doctor was just standing there with a smirk on his face. 

“Hello,” he said, eyes gleaming. “Snooping around my things, I see.” 

“Fuck you! Where’s Dan!?” Arin shouted, reaching for his gun. He didn’t see the rifle anywhere on the doctor’s person, which gave him a boost of confidence. He was already at an advantage. 

“Your friend volunteered to participate in some other experiments.”

“He didn’t volunteer for _shit!_ ” Arin spat as he aimed the gun. He wasted no time in pulling the trigger but the doctor had already moved closer. The bullet hit the wall and Arin fired again. 

The gun clicked, empty. 

“Shit,” Arin scrambled off the bed, putting some distance between him and the doctor. He had more bullets in his bag, right? He just needed time to reload- but the doctor was too fast. 

He was lunging at Arin with outstretched arms, his face still twisted into a sneer. Arin dodged out of the way but felt the gun drop from his grasp, and then a foot was planting a swift kick into the back of Arin’s leg. He jerked forward onto the floor, his body slamming hard on the stone and the breath knocked from his lungs. As he tried to scramble back to his feet, he felt the doctor’s weight plummeting against his shoulders and then they were both on the ground, a thrashing mess of limbs. 

“Get off me, you fucking freak!” Arin roared as he twisted around, fighting the doctor’s body weight and the hits that rained down on his shoulders. 

“Stay still,” the man yelled warningly, one hand fisting into Arin’s hair and yanking hard. Arin screeched and threw an elbow back as hard as he could, and the impact was so powerful it sent jarring pain up through his arm. 

The doctor was the one to scream this time. His grip loosened a bit but it was enough for Arin to climb to his knees and grab on to the side of the desk for support. The man was still clinging to his back and Arin’s eyes widened with shock as teeth sunk into the junction of his shoulder and neck. 

The doctor was biting _hard_. Arin struggled, whipping his body around, but it only made his shoulder explode into pain as the skin was torn. Hot piercing pain stabbed through his shoulder as the doctor’s teeth sunk into Arin’s flesh and he felt the warm flow of blood running over his skin. 

Blinded by pain and rage, Arin reached for the closest thing he could find - the lamp. He wrapped his hand around the bulb and squeezed until the glass shattered in his palm. The pain of the glass shards was nothing compared to the unrelenting teeth in his shoulder. Arin repositioned the biggest piece of glass in his hand and tilted his head out of the way before he was throwing his fist right into the doctor’s face. 

The teeth in his neck were gone as the doctor bellowed in pain, rearing backwards to scream. Arin clambored to his feet and slipped out of the way, backing up as he stared with wide eyes at the doctor’s writhing figure. The glass shard had gone right into the man’s left eye and was still stuck in his face. Blood poured down the doctor’s cheeks. 

Arin hardly had time to think. He swiftly picked up his gun where it had fallen and then he was sprinting out of the room and down the hall as fast as he could run. He was soaked in blood and his shoulder was throbbing but he hardly noticed the pain as he rushed through the castle halls. He had one goal - get to Dan. 

Arin raced down the stairs and into the library, skidding to a stop in front of the safe. Shakily, he punched the code into the keypad with his bloody fingers. 

8 - 7 - 2 - 2.

The door to the safe popped open. Inside rested a silver key that Arin snatched up faster than he had ever grabbed anything in his life. There was also a box of bullets and Arin whipped out his gun to quickly load it. He didn’t even bother checking if he had any ammo in his backpack first. 

When his weapon was taken care of, Arin turned around and darted across the foyer to the locked lab door. He was sweating and shaking as he slid the key into the lock and turned it forcefully. The door clicked as it unlocked and then Arin was swinging it open and practically throwing himself inside. Once he was in he slammed the door shut behind him and rested against it, breathing hard. 

He needed a minute. He was so fucking exhausted and he surely would have been down if not for the adrenaline coursing through his veins. Or it was video game logic that kept him going past what a normal person could endure. He’d already died once, anyway. 

Arin took a minute to look down the new hall he was standing in. He was so sick of hallways. If he ever has to enter another castle hallway in his life he might just have a breakdown. 

This hall was different, though. It looked cleaner, fancier, newer. There were fluorescent lights overhead and steel metal doors to rooms on either side. 

Since the doctor was preoccupied and dealing with one less eye, Arin didn’t feel as much urgency as before. The man couldn’t be in two places at once, so that meant Dan was probably okay for the time being. Arin had to keep going. 

He started moving along when he was ready, ignoring the dampness of his shirt where the blood was soaking it. He didn’t know if he had any health pouches in his bag and at this point he didn’t care to look. He just wanted to be done with this nightmare. 

Arin opened the first door. It led to a small individual lab, with a metal table in the center and racks of equipment on the walls. There were traces of dried blood and other mysterious fluids, and the table had several restraints attached to it. Arin felt slightly dizzy from either blood loss or his growing horror. Some tools laid on the floor like they were thrown, and a big empty clear vat was mounted up against the wall. A label across its base read “health remedy”, but there was nothing inside it. Arin stumbled out of this room since there was nothing useful, and turned into the next room. 

He was met with a similar looking setup. Another metal table, more restraints, more broken equipment and glass shattered on the floor. There were multiple vats propped up against the wall, however, and they all contained different brightly colored liquids. The chemicals inside were nearly glowing in green and cyan. Their labels had been rubbed off or removed, but above them sat a big sign that read “HIGHLY FLAMMABLE.” 

Arin, disoriented, backed out of the room and entered the next. Tables, racks, tools, glass. Bloodstains, black slime, scratches in the wall. Vats on the wall with churning silver liquid that swirled so enchantingly. Arin stared for a moment before tearing his eyes away. He was feeling faint. 

Every room was more of the same, if not slightly unique. Different chemicals lined the walls but every single lab had a similar table with its restraints. Arin could almost hear echoes of the screams that had once rattled through these halls. 

In one of the rooms, the rotting corpse of a body lay on the floor. Arin gagged and choked, his vision swimming. He looked over at the chemicals and to his relief saw the sign for “HEALTH REMEDY. HIGHLY FLAMMABLE.” He approached the vat, which was missing its lid, and dipped his bloody hand inside. He scooped up some of the green gel and slapped it against his aching shoulder. Then he rubbed it into his palm after brushing out the last of the pieces of glass. 

He leaned against the wall for a few moments, his shoulders heaving as he breathed, and then the pain was gliding away. Sweet relief. Arin felt his senses come back to him as he healed and he blinked away the blurriness that had taken over his vision. 

The strange feeling that had come over him was gone now and he felt in charge of himself again. He went back into the hallway and looked around; there were two doors left. Dan had to be inside one of them. 

He pushed open the closest door and to his surprise, it was nothing but tanks of chemicals. Some were bright, others were dull and metallic, and some were the recognizable green health remedy. A few tanks held black viscous liquid. A sign to the right listed off the dangers of working with the chemicals, but all Arin noticed was the bullet point that said “FIRE HAZARD.” 

Arin had no reason to spend any more time in there so he exited back into the hallway. Finally he was face to face with the last door. 

He slowly opened it and to his relief there was Dan, laying limply across a table with his limbs securely fastened to the metal. 

“Dan!” Arin called, his voice cracking with emotion. He rushed into the lab room and stopped at Dan’s side. The sight before him made his heart twist with pain. 

Dan was pale and covered in dried blood, but Arin could not see any injuries on his body. His shirt had been cut off and Arin noticed it lying on the floor, tattered. The worst part was the visible tracks down Dan’s cheeks where his tears had dried. 

There was a cart next to him with some blades and saws and tools Arin didn’t even recognize. Most of them were coated in blood. Dan’s blood. There was also an empty bucket on the floor and a jar of green health gel that was almost empty, with just barely enough of the goop left at the bottom. Arin took this all in with round, terrified eyes. 

Something on the cart pulled his gaze back over and he zeroed in on a small box. Is that what he thought it was? Arin’s heart skipped a beat as he quickly snatched it and glanced over the little white box with its red strip on the side. 

_Matches._

Arin looked back over at Dan, whose chest was rising and falling slowly. He placed his own hand into Dan’s, unknowingly, and Dan jerked awake with a terrified cry. 

He looked at Arin with wide unrecognizing eyes and his limbs thrashed weakly, as much as they could in their restraints. Arin pulled back, afraid that he had hurt Dan. 

“Danny, please, talk to me. It’s me, Arin. You’re okay now, I’ve got you.” 

The primal fear in Dan’s gaze faded and he stilled as he regained his consciousness. He licked his dry lips and his brows furrowed a little like he was having a hard time understanding. Arin’s heart panged - was he too late? Had too much damage already been done? 

“A-Arin?” Dan croaked. He tried to smile. 

“Yeah, it’s okay, you’re gonna be okay. I’m gonna untie you now. I’m so sorry I left you. This is all my fault.” 

Dan shook his head gently. “No. Arin, you need - you have to go.” 

Arin stopped. “W-what? What’s wrong?” 

“He’s coming back. S’not safe.” 

Arin looked around the room apprehensively. “The doctor? No, I hurt him bad, he’s not here right now. I can get you out of here.” 

Dan suddenly looked very distressed. “Arin, you need to hide. Now,” he urged, his breathing rate picking up. “Leave me, hurry. He’s gonna take you too. Arin, please. It’s a trap.” 

Arin looked to his right and saw a few cabinets that he could easily slip into to hide. The choice was laid out so neatly in front of him that it felt like he was looking at himself from a screen, far away. 

Help or Hide. 

It almost felt like he was pressing a button on a controller when he reached out to grab Dan’s tied wrist. 

“I’m not leaving you again. I’m not going to stand by and watch while he hurts you.” Arin undid the restraints quickly and Dan protectively pulled his hand close to himself as Arin began to work on the others. He freed Dan’s wrists, and then his neck and torso, and then his ankles. Dan sat up while Arin loosened the last restraint around his hips. 

Dan stumbled to his feet after sliding off the table and he grabbed Arin’s arm for support. His legs wobbled but he steadied himself in a few moments. 

“Are you okay?” Arin asked, and he felt like an idiot. Of course Dan wasn’t okay. 

“Yeah, I think so. F-fuck.” Dan blinked a few times and then looked around the room with lingering panic. “You’re sure he’s not coming? This is exactly what he wanted. Ar, he wanted to-” 

Dan was cut off as a door slammed, making both of them jump. 

They stood there, frozen, as the doctor conveniently entered the room from another door near the cabinets, his rifle raised and pointed directly at them. Dan stiffened and pressed closer to Arin’s body. 

Arin squinted and blinked in confusion at what he was seeing. Something wasn’t right. 

The doctor had both eyes intact and not a scratch on him. He was smiling wide and triumphantly as he aimed the gun at them. 

The words Arin had read earlier flashed in his mind. 

_“I gained a deep gash on the back of my hand that I attempted to treat with the health remedy. It did not work. This leads me to conclude that I have been overexposed to it and now I am resistant to its effects. This is unfortunate, as I can no longer use the health remedy to treat my own afflictions.”_

It didn’t make any sense. 

“Thank you, little lambs, for falling right into place, exactly where I wanted you two. I didn’t even need to lift a _finger_ ,” the doctor purred, winking at Dan as he spoke. Dan flinched, but Arin didn’t understand the meaning. 

“Put your hands in the air. Both of you. I know you have a gun,” the doctor said, jerking his rifle. Arin had no choice but to comply, shakily raising his hands above his head as Dan did the same. He was filled with dread and the terrible sense that there was something he was missing, one piece of the puzzle that he didn’t understand. 

“Here’s what’s going to happen now. You, honey, are gonna get right back on your table and your friend is gonna strap you back in,” the doctor started by directing his rifle at Dan, and then shifted it to Arin before adding, “and you are going to stand against the wall so I can restrain you.” He nodded his head to an area of the wall where a pair of cuffs was hanging from the stone. 

“Then, you’re gonna watch while I tear your pretty friend to pieces. And after I’ve slowly tortured him to death, I’m going to pour some component down your throat and see what happens.” 

Arin was too stunned to speak. He was terrified, his blood was rushing in his ears and his heart was pounding. He could feel Dan trembling next to him and when he spared a glance over he saw the fresh tears dripping down his cheeks. 

There was only one thing Arin could manage to blurt out. The thing that was prickling the back of his mind. 

“How the fuck do you have both of your eyes?”

The doctor seemed thrown for a loop with this question. His grin fell and was replaced with irritated confusion. “What are you talking about?” 

Dan looked just as confused and was glancing between Arin and the doctor. 

Arin couldn’t keep up with his own racing thoughts. “You- you said the health doesn’t work on you anymore. I- I stabbed you with a-” 

“A shard of glass, yes,” another voice called out from behind them. Arin spun around fast enough to give himself whiplash and his heart dropped to his feet at what he saw. 

There stood another man, the exact mirror image of the doctor except with a dark bleeding hole where his eye had once been. He held the piece of glass in his hand, dangling it with two fingers, and then let it drop to the floor. “How could I forget,” he said, dripping with sarcasm. 

Arin’s brain struggled to process what he was seeing. He looked back over at the doctor - no, the first doctor- and then the doctor he had fought with. They were identical. 

“What the fuck?” 

Dan was shaking his head and trembling again, wrapping his arms around himself. “Oh no, no no no no, fuck.” 

The first doctor erupted into boisterous laughter, leaning backwards as he cackled at Arin and Dan’s expense. Arin struggled to breathe, looking between the two men as his mind refused to admit what he had realized. The second doctor joined in on the laughter until the room was filled with their cacophonous hysterics. 

It turned out he didn’t have to admit it, because Dan said it for him. 

“Twins. There’s two of them. Oh god, they’re twins, Arin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There should only be two more chapters but they might take some extra time, so I'm not sure when they'll be up. Thanks for sticking with this, everyone!


End file.
